


Ground Control

by nieded



Series: Ground Control [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: And a very happy ending, Astronauts, Bowie, Dogs, Good Omens AU, M/M, Star Trek - Freeform, Unrepentant Fluff, and aziraphale helps raise him, and crowley is a good dad, and there are gratuitous references to, in which crowley kidnaps warlock as a baby, space, thinking he's the antichrist, utter self-indulgance, warlock is a good kid
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 14:37:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 31,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20472680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nieded/pseuds/nieded
Summary: In which Crowley kidnaps the Antichrist as a baby--or so he thinks--and ends up with Warlock instead. Basically, I wanted a story where Warlock got a happy ending. Here it is.Or:Aziraphale closes the shop earlier and earlier until they’re spending all day together, every moment. They take Warlock to the art museum and have a Star Trek marathon. Warlock loves The Next Generation but still reserves a special place in his heart for Spock from the original. He hangs a poster of the Vulcan next to David Bowie, his stern face in direct opposite to the cocked hip and flair of the rockstar. They go good together, though, the spacemen. If they lived a different life, Crowley thinks, he’d swoop Warlock up and take him to the stars. He’d show him Alpha Centauri, a system comprised of two large suns in orbit around each other, and a third circling them both.That’s you, he’d say to Warlock, and the other is Aziraphale. He’d point to the two stars in the centre drawn to each other. And that’s me going around you both.





	1. Part I

Hastur and Ligur wait for him in the graveyard behind the church. It figures since they’re suck-ups. They can’t appreciate how running late fuels the pettiest anger, chips away at someone’s goodness and grace. Crowley can feel them seethe over his tardiness and grins. Even though they’re already damned, he preens a bit knowing he can ruffle the feathers of the Dukes of Hell.

“All hail, Satan,” they say.

“Uh. Hi, guys.” He waves his hand.

Hastur glares at him. His beady eyes narrow and his mouth purses just a bit. It entertains Crowley watching Hastur unravel, fraying at the edges in frustration. But then they have to recite their deeds for the day, and Crowley hates this part. Nobody appreciates the things he does, the widespread tarnish of sin he creates seeping through all of London. He thinks bringing down the phone network is genius. Just fucking brilliant. 

“It’s not exactly… craftsmanship,” Ligur says, though his eyes are furrowed, a bit confused as though he doesn’t quite understand what a cellular tower is and what it means to bring one down.

Crowley rolls his eyes, thankful for his sunglasses. Satan, the things he can get away with around his superiors with just a pair of shades. Humans and their inventions are incredible. “Head office doesn’t seem to mind. Time’s are changing.” 

Ligur grins. It’s an ugly sort of thing, quite enchanting for a demon. He’s all teeth and gleaming dark eyes. He bends over and picks up a hamper off the ground, handing it to Crowley. A muffled wail escapes from inside, and Crowley recoils. Now? The Antichrist  _ now _ ?

“No,” he says, fighting the urge to step back.

“Oh yes,” says Hastur. 

“Not really my scene, that. I don’t go for the direct approach. You know me.”

“Head office is quite impressed with you. You should be proud.” Hastur enjoys himself, watching Crowley squirm a bit. “Ligur would give his right arm for this job.”

Ligur nods and spreads his lips in a wide, sharp grin. “Someone’s arm, at any rate. As you said, time’s are changing. You’ll be receiving directions soon.” 

Hastur pulls out a clipboard, and Crowley blinks for a moment. He grabs the document and skims it. Paperwork. He invented paperwork and all of its headachey, legally-binding monstrosities. Shit. Like every person who has ever been presented with an iTunes user agreement, he grunts and signs it without reading beyond the first paragraph. The paper goes up in smoke at the touch of his sigil. 

Hastur lifts his hand. “All hail, Satan.”

“All hail, Satan.” 

“Yup,” Crowley says, snatching the basket from them. 

He stalks back to the Bentley. Well, bollocks fucking shit fuck fucking fuck. He snarls and yanks open the passenger side door, sparing a moment to send a muttered apology to his car before throwing the basket in the seat. He slams the door and comes around the driver’s side, slamming his door too. 

The force of the door startles the Antichrist, and he lets out a high pitched, pitiful wail. Crowley grits his teeth, hands on the steering wheel as he sits in the dark. “Shut up,” he hisses. “Shit shit shit shit shit.” 

The baby keeps crying, and what the fuck? He’s supposed to be the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings. Why is he crying? Why did Satan send a fucking baby?

Crowley clenches his eyes shut for a moment, knowing he’ll regret this. He reaches over to the passenger seat and flips open the top to the hamper. He has the son of Satan, after all. He upset the Great Beast. He might get eaten.

“Oh,” he says, startled. He expected horns, maybe spitting venom, saliva that burned like acid and eyes shooting laser beams. But no, the Antichrist is just a baby so it seems. “Hello,” he says to him. 

Round luminous eyes look up at him, dark in the shadow of the graveyard but glittering all the same. His cries taper off, interested in Crowley’s face, and his small pudgy hands reach upward for his sunglasses, curious.

“Oh no, little lad,” he says, snapping to secure his frames. Crowley hates curious things, absolutely hates them. He doesn’t find them charming whatsoever, especially not infants. Little sponges, they are, putting everything in their mouths, hungry to learn about the world and devour it. It  _ doesn’t _ fascinate him, and he  _ does not _ feel a strange stuttering in his chest as he fights to save his frames.

The little bugger has a strong grip and cries when Crowley tries to wiggle his fingers free. “No, shh. Don’t do that. Don’t start crying again,” he hisses. 

The Adversary wins and gums at the arm of the glasses and Crowley growls. He is weak, absolutely weak to babies. “Aw, damn it. Fine. You win this time. Only because you’re my boss’s kid, and I’ll be ash if he finds out I made you cry.”

Then he faces forward again and starts the engine. “What the fuck,” he whispers. He shifts the Bentley into first gear and turns the player on to distract him from the gummy sounds of his glasses getting destroyed and the roaring chaos of thoughts rampaging in his head. 

Then the music turns to static, cutting out. Crowley tolerates a lot from the Bentley. He lets it morph everything into Queen songs and only hisses when it shrinks two inches on either side whenever Aziraphale gets in--like they need to sit any closer--but static? “What’s wrong with you, then?” he snaps, jabbing at the console. “Why does this happen to me?”

“Bzz ZZzzz… because you deserve it, Crowley,” a voice says, interrupting  _ Seaside Rendezvous _ . 

He swerves and curses, righting himself on the road. He bites his knuckle and fights down a grown.  _ Satan?  _ he mouths to himself. “Right, uh, leave it up to me.” 

“That’s what we’re doing,” Satan says. “But just so you know, if it goes wrong, you’ll suffer terrible consequences. Bring the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Myself, and Lord of Darkness to the Satanic Nuns of the Chattering Order of Saint Beryl.”

“The who?”

“Just go to Tadfield, Crowley. They’ll swap the babies out with the US Ambassador’s son.”

“Right.” He drums his fingers on the steering wheel. “And, uh, what happens to the other baby?”

“You’ll have to dispose of him, of course.” 

Crowley groans and bangs his head forward several times. “No, really? Kill the kid?” 

“What does it matter? When the Antichrist comes into his full power, no human will be around to mourn him.” 

“I shouldn’t have asked,” Crowley mutters.

“That has always been your problem,” Satan agrees. 

The stereo cuts out again, and the crooning voice of Freddie Mercury fades in. Crowley jabs at the knobs several times until it turns off. So. He has to deliver the Antichrist to the nunnery and then take the spare baby and feed him to the wolves or dump him in the Thames or throw him in a meat grinder. 

Ugh.

The thing is, Crowley likes kids. He’s wandered the Earth long enough, seen civilizations rise to power and fall again, to know a kid is like a blank slate. They have free will and nothing to taint them or sway them in either direction, not yet. No religious cultist parents or drunken grandfathers or fear that women are witches. They know nothing, and they want to know everything. 

They get things. They see things adults don’t. They see ghosts, and make up imaginary friends, and pretend to be horses for a week and nobody thinks it’s weird. They’re pure and untainted by all the stressful social baggage society piles on year-by-year before they metamorphose into anxiety-riddled adults with daddy issues. It’s refreshing. It’s liberating. It reminds Crowley of that moment just after Eve sank her teeth into the apple. 

Of course, it had all gone tits up after, but for a moment it had been magical. Eve had lit up, the juice of the apple running down her chin, hands shaking as though she’d seen the world in colour for the first time. 

That’s what kids are like. Every moment is new, and every new moment is like a firework going off in their brains. He can see the moment of excitement, realization, and understanding on their faces when they learn something interesting. Their worlds are in constant flux, bombarded by constant stimulation, and he has no idea how they don’t just explode from overload. 

He can’t kill some harmless kid, a baby. He doesn’t even want the apocalypse to come.

He pulls into the nunnery, headlights beaming at a fellow outside enjoying a cigarette. “Right,” he mutters to himself. “I’ll just keep the second baby. No need to throw him in the dumpster, yeah? Can’t be too hard to find a good home for him.”

He steps out of the Bentley with the hamper, careful not to swing it too hard. Then again, maybe if he swings it hard enough it’ll cause some sort of brain damage and the apocalypse will be averted. Can Antichrists get brain damage? He starts to swing his arms a bit--just a bit!--and if anyone asks, this is just how he walks. Yeah. He has legs and hips and knows how to use them. That’s all.

“Where’s it happening, then?” he asks the man out front.

“Room three,” he says. “Lord knows what’s going on in there though. It’s all a mystery to me.”

Crowley grins, pained. “Yeah. Scary stuff it is, the end of the world.”

The man makes a face, wide-eyed, nodding as if they’ve found some sort of camaraderie. Then he looks over his shoulder, half-expecting one of the nuns to come out and rap his fingers for thinking such things. He schools his face. “Your lights are on.” 

Crowley snaps his fingers and resumes his swagger into the convent.

“Excuse me,” a woman says, her heels clicking on the tile as she rushes towards him. “You’re not supposed to be here.”

He turns to look at her and sees her nervous energy, her eagerness to please. She holds a tin of biscuits of all things. Easy. He grins and pulls down his glasses, revealing his yellow snake eyes, savouring the way she startles and drops the tin of cookies on the floor. 

“Oh!” she says, hands clutching her habit. “Master Crowley! And--ah--is that…?” 

He winks at her before returning his glasses to their rightful place, pressing a finger over his lips. “Take this to Room Three and swap out the baby. Give me the spare.” 

“Right away, Master Crowley,” she says and skitters off.

She returns several moments later, hamper full again. She lifts the corner so they can both peek inside, and sure enough, there’s another baby in there, pink, red, and wrinkled. “They all kind of look the same, don’t they?” she asks, “when they’re brand new? Like little tiny mole rats with their adorable toesy-woesies.” 

Crowley smacks his lips together and shuts the hamper. Right, enough of that. He takes it slinks back to the Bentley. 

Once back in the driver’s seat, he sits for a moment breathing. The man out front has disappeared inside. “Cool,” he says. “Cool cool cool. So, I just find a nice loving family, drop this little guy off, and he gets to live a wonderful happy life until the world explodes in eleven years. Yep.”

He groans and throws his head back against the headrest. The world is going to end in eleven years. “Fuuuuuck!” he shouts. “That’s it! We’re done! The whole world up in flames! Great big Kraken emerging from the sea to devour everything. Fish falling from the sky. I hate the smell of fish! I ought to just take the Antichrist and kill him--Oh.”

There’s a plan. There’s a great gigantic colossally stupid plan. He could take the Antichrist. He looks at the hamper where the innocent babe of the ambassador sleeps. What a thought. He could take the Antichrist and raise him to be good, teach him free will. He’s just a baby after all, a little wrinkly mole rat shaped sponge with cute toesy-woesies. 

“Oh noooo,” he says to himself. “That’s a terrible idea, Crowley. Satan will come for you if he finds out you kidnapped his son.” But Satan will come for them all anyway. Fish dive-bombing faster than the speed of sound, guts splattering all over the Bentley upon impact. Flames. Either he’s getting stabbed in the heart by an angry angel or Hell wins the great war, and he’ll be trapped in damnation for the rest of eternity. The demons lick the walls down there. 

With quick work, he shucks his jacket down to the black button-down underneath. He miracles up a white clerical collar and puts it on, smoothing out his hair into something respectable. He grabs the hamper and marches back upstairs.

He finds the nuns in a small little break room, a gaggle of them playing cards. “Psst,” he says, startling them. “Where’s the Antichrist?”

“Master Crowley,” one of them says, surprised. She flusters a bit and then bows of all things. He tries not to preen at that. “He’s in Room Two.”

“What?” he says, face contorting in confusion. “Isn’t the ambassador in Room Three?” 

“No, that’d be Mrs Young.” 

“Who the fuck is Mrs Young?” 

The nuns freeze and they all look at each other with the dawning realization that there has been a massive error, a fuck-up of grand proportions. “Cool,” Crowley says. “I can figure this out.” He shoves the hamper at them and tells them to wait.

He stomps down the corridor and knocks on the door of Room Two, putting on his best Irish lilt. “Hello Mrs Dowling,” he says, clasping his hands in front of him. “I’m Father Anthony. How’s the little one doing?” 

Mrs Dowling turns to look at him, smiling, exhaustion eking around her edges. She cradles the baby in her arms. “He’s good. Barely made a sound.”

Crowley thinks about the wailing Antichrist in the car. That doesn’t sound right. He peers over the baby. He looks sort of like the right baby though, he guesses. Just as wrinkly if anything. Maybe, he thinks, if he sees the two babies together he can figure out which one is the Antichrist. “He’s adorable,” he says. “May I?” 

Mrs Dowling hands him over. 

“Have you thought of a name, then?”

She scoffs and shakes her head. “My husband wants to name him Thaddeus after himself.” Crowley makes a face at this, uncontained. “That’s what I thought too,” she says. “He’s not here anyway, so what say does he get? The nuns think Warlock.”

“Warlock,” he says, letting it roll over his tongue. That’s a great name, powerful. Fitting for a little hellion. “Bit unusual,” he tells her. “Have you thought about Damien? It means to ‘tame and subdue.’ Good for a future little world leader.”

She laughs at that. “Damien Dowling. I suppose it has a certain ring to it.” 

“Mm,” Crowley agrees. “Do you mind? I’m just going to pop off and do some blessings. I’ll return in just a moment with your little one.” 

“Sure. Thank you, Father.” 

He takes the baby and drops it off in the staff room with the spare and then repeats the process with Mrs Young and the little thing she chooses to call Adam. “Bit on the nose, that,” he mutters. 

When he returns to the break room, he discovers the nuns have taken the spare out of the hamper to coo at it. He blinks. “Wait, which one came from Room Three?”

“This one,” they say in unison, then look at each other. 

Crowley hisses. “Why did you take that one out of the hamper? We knew he was the spare. Now we have no idea which one is the Antichrist.” He starts waving at them with his free hand. “All right, move. Put them all together. I’ll know which one is Great Beast when I see it.”

Once all three babies are lined up, he and the nuns loom over them. “Right, so.” He looks at them and checks their toes. They’re all very toesy-woesy like, all vague mole rat-shaped lumps. Then one of them stretches, eyes opening big and wide, letting out a powerful wail. 

“Aha,” Crowley says and points at him in accusation. “You. You’re the little devil I’m looking for.” He scoops him up. 

He gets a better look at him now that they’re not in the Bentley in the dark shadow of the graveyard. The baby quiets as soon as he’s held, a needy little thing, and reaches up for the sunglasses. Crowley pulls his head back. “Nope, not falling for that one again, little bugger.” He lets the Antichrist grip his finger instead, gumming at it. 

He looks at the nuns. “Right, so return the other two babies to the families, and I’ll just be off.” 

“But how do we know which is which?” one of the nuns asks. “And I thought we needed the Antichrist?”

“New orders fresh from Hell. And figure it out yourself. You mixed them up!”

The women scatter with the two spare babies, leaving Crowley alone in the staff room. He lets out a slow breath, looking around. The anxiety bubbling up inside of him calms. “It’s done then,” he says to the baby. “No going back now. It’s just you and me, little guy.” He runs his finger pointer down the boy’s forehead, the miniscule slope of his nose, and taps at the little divot above his lips, the philtrum. “They say an angel presses right here and seals all the secrets of Heaven inside just before a baby is born. Load of rubbish, that. I’m going to teach you everything.”

He shifts him, cradling the soft head just in the crook of his arm, letting him continue to gum at his finger. “Hello, Warlock.”

He drives the speed limit home. No big deal. Crowley knows how to read speed limit signs and can locate the brake pedal. He can do this.

It takes forever, his nerves frayed, hands fidgeting on the steering wheel. He doesn't dare turn on the radio lest it wakens the Prince of Darkness. He discovers that cruising over open country roads, windows rolled down and the smell of pine trees wafting in, does a lot to soothe the Spawn of Satan. Too bad it does nothing for Crowley's rampaging anxiety. 

Upon reaching his flat in Mayfair, he miracles up the two things he figures he needs most: diapers and formula. Then passes the fuck out. 

Sometime later, his phone starts ringing. 

"Eh?" he says, flopping off the couch. The shrill sound wakes Warlock who cries with all the force of Hell's demonic flayings. “No, no no no,” he says and flips open the hamper basket to pull out the red-faced, screeching demon child. “Hey, are you hungry? Are you wet?” When do babies start talking? He almost wishes Warlock would communicate via boiling sulphuric spit. It’d be a bit more familiar and a hundred times easier to interpret.

The phone rings and rings and rings.

He snatches the receiver and jerks it up to his head. “What?” he snaps.

“Oh dear,” a familiar voice says. “Is everything all right?”

Warlock stills at the sound of the unfamiliar voice and Crowley relaxes. “Aziraphale, sorry, caught me shouting at the plants,” he says. “Has a blessing gone wrong, then?”

“What? No! No, not at all. I was worried.” Crowley can hear him fidgeting on the other end of the line.

“About what? Spit it out.”

“You see, I just had my evening meal interrupted by Gabriel. He says  _ It _ has been delivered.”

“It?”

A sigh. “Don’t be obtuse, Crowley. The Antichrist!”

Ah. Crowley hitches Warlock higher onto his shoulder, holding him by the bum. The Destroyer of Kings has the gall to wipe his snotty nose on his suit jacket, the one Crowley miracled from the front window of a Gucci display on Bond Street. He hisses. “Yeah, look. About that.”

“You weren’t involved, were you?”

Crowley hesitates at Aziraphale’s tone, so accusatory. Well, the angel can be a bit judgmental, though Crowley would never say it to his face. “Eh, define involved?” 

“Crowley.”

“Look,” he starts and then pauses. How much does he tell him? What would he even say?  _ Hey, by the way, I may have kidnapped the Antichrist in a futile attempt to stop Armageddon. Is there a place beyond Hell? Because that’s where I’m going. _ “I may have been responsible for delivering the baby to its destination.” He doesn’t add,  _ and then I kidnapped it again. _

“So it’s all true then,” Aziraphale says. “The end times are upon us. My side will prevail, of course.” 

Crowley rolls his eyes and scoffs, tucking the receiver against his shoulder so he can pat the back of Warlock’s head. “Yeah, sure. I’ve seen the Antichrist up close. He’s positively monstrous.” 

“Well, how do we proceed, then?” 

Crowley catches his reflection in the shine of his stainless steel refrigerator, surprised to find himself rocking the Lord of Darkness on instinct. They sway together, the laziest two-step shuffle, and the baby snuffles before settling in the junction of his neck and shoulder. He stills. “I guess we just… carry on. Business as usual,” he tells Aziraphale. 

“Oh, right.”

“Since you’re so convinced Heaven will win and all.”

“Assuredly.” And then a pause. “Dinner tomorrow?”

“Nnng. Look, I have plans. Raincheck?”

“With who? Doing what?”

Crowley scowls a bit at the surprise in Aziraphale’s voice. He does know other people. Sort of. Knew them at least. “None of your business. Demonic things. You’d find it dreadful.”

“Ah,” the angel says. He can picture him nodding in agreement, perhaps patting his stomach while rocking on the heels and balls of his feet. “Well, call on me next week, will you? We really only have eleven more years to enjoy this earth so we might as well get started.”

Alcohol, Crowley thinks, and maybe that really fine white from 1902 Aziraphale’s been saving. He might have an aged bottle of Macallan somewhere stashed away too. “Excellent idea. I’ll ring you then.”

“Pip pip,” Aziraphale says and hangs up.

With that settled, Crowley sighs. Having deterred Aziraphale from visiting, he has more time to figure out what the fuck he’s going to do. The Adversary settles into a deep snooze, and then he smells it. He sniffs and then frowns, scenting with his forked tongue just to make sure before gagging. Oh, Heaven! That’s one nasty diaper. 

This leads to an unfolding string of events in which Crowley has to wrestle a wailing newborn as he kicks poo everywhere, wipe him, wrangle on a new diaper, and settle him again. He tries miracling away the diaper because he doesn’t own a garbage bin and discovers miracles do not remove the lingering smell of baby poo. 

Warlock keeps crying and crying and crying, a high pitched, hiccuping wail. Crowley waffles over feeding him a bottle--food equals more poo--but he can’t just starve a baby. It goes against his plan to raise the Antichrist if he dies from hunger. 

Okay, so, warming a bottle should be easy, except Crowley has never used a microwave before despite owning one since the 1970s. When he warms one by hand, it melts and bursts into flames of hellfire. Good. Right. Warlock’s a demon so maybe he likes burning, boiling casein and whey protein derived from cow’s milk, dehydrated, rehydrated, and then set on fire. It smells delicious.

Warlock lets him know it does not under any circumstance smell delicious. He continues to scream, and now the flat smells like baby shit, burnt spoiled milk, and sulfur. After three more miracled bottles, having to sit and read--read!--directions on the formula label and watch a youtube video on operating a microwave, he procures the perfect bottle, tests it on his wrist, and scoops up the wailing Antichrist.

Warlock quiets in an instant. Crowley finds it fascinating. So far he has startled and gotten scared, had a wet nappy, and asked for food, but once Crowley figured it out, Warlock calmed in a moment. He’s communicating, already, and they’re finding their own little language. 

Warlock guzzles the bottle. He hiccups when done and Crowley picks him up. “Burping,” he says, reading a WikiHow page. “Okay, so support the bum and the neck, belly on the shoulder, pat the back… and then I throw the baby?” He stares at the illustration of the woman hoisting the baby in the air over her head. “That can’t be right?”

He pats Warlock absentmindedly while skimming the internet when the Dark Prince lets out a gurgle and something wet splatters over Crowley’s shoulder and back. 

“And I forgot the towel,” he says, biting back a whine. “I don’t even own a towel.” 

He settles the drowsy Warlock back in the hamper. He’ll have to find a bed--crib?--or something for the long-term. Crowley’s forte is not in the long-term. He shuts the lid.

He waves at his shoulder, disappearing the spit up, but he finds again that miracling it away doesn’t take away the smell. “Eugh. All right. Research.”

Crowley grabs the hamper and moves it to the study. He powers up the very nice, expensive computer he keeps for show and groans when he has to wait for 167 Windows updates to install before proceeding. Who decided these were a good idea in the first place? “Ohhh, I hate myself,” he says, laying his head against the cool marble. He thumbs at the sharp corners of his desk while he waits, thinking,  _ well those will have to go once he starts walking. _

Oh, that’s a thought. The Antichrist will be walking. He’ll need to look up some milestones or something. When do they start being mobile? Six months? Three years? Surely sometime in there. Can he just feed him formula forever? Because that sounds a lot easier than procuring and assembling food.

Once his computer finishes updating, it’s time for another bottle and a nappy change. This time, he only screws the bottle up once and doesn’t set anything on fire. Then he walks around the halls of his apartment complex looking for the rubbish chute to throw away the nappy the proper way. He still forgets to magic up a towel and ends up splattered in baby vomit for a second time, sweet and milky. 

Warlock falls asleep before Crowley even settles again in his desk chair. “You’re not so bad, are you?” he asks, peering into the hamper. He boots up a web browser.

Google informs him he needs a bed. He needs a surplus of baby bottles, formula, and diapers that are actually the right size. The mommy forums tell him he needs wet wipes and baby powder and lotion for diaper rash and a stroller and car seat and toys for stimulation like a mobile and stuffed animals and little building blocks, and does he know that babies like music? Did Satan play him Mozart in the womb? Did Mozart play Mozart for him? Was there even a womb? And holy what the fuck shit christ on a cracker sort of insanity has he gotten himself into?

“I might vomit,” he says to himself. “I don’t even know if I can vomit, but we’re about to find out.”

He orders duplicates of everything on eBay and calls it good, throwing himself on his bed. Like an afterthought, he levitates the little hamper from the study to the floor beside the mattress and then falls asleep. 

They develop a routine. To be more precise, Crowley becomes a slave to the whims and needs of an infant and is driven out of his mind one filthy diaper at a time. 

“I thought you were going to call on me,” Aziraphale says over the phone, disappointed. Crowley can hear the frown in his voice, can see the little downturn of his mouth in a moue and the way even his bowtie droops when he finds something not up to snuff. 

The bowtie droops a lot around Crowley, and it makes him hiss. 

“Look, I’ve been busy. Antichrist things.” This is, by technicality, not a lie, though it isn’t as dangerous, exciting, or demonic as it sounds. 

“Already? I thought the whole thing didn’t kick off until the boy turned eleven. What could they possibly have you doing?” 

“Just… Stuff. Okay?” He throws a bottle in the microwave and punches at the number pad with aggression. He’s gotten good at this part, could even do it in his sleep if the little bastard ever let him rest. “What about you? Aren’t they prepping you for the great war? Reciting holy liturgy? Fencing classes?”

“Hilarious, Crowley. No, it’s been pretty quiet, all things considered. I suppose they figure what’s the point of performing miracles when it’s all going to go down in a flaming ball of fire? Not much point in saving souls when there won’t be a Hell anyway for the bad ones to go.”

Crowley blinks, eyes bleary. Leave it to Aziraphale to get to the point in the most vivid, wretched way possible, the bastard. “And where will all the souls go then, if Hell’s destroyed?”

“Destroyed too, I suppose.” He sounds unperturbed. There’s a rustle, the sound of him opening a teabag and the whooshing sound of steaming water being poured straight from the kettle. Crowley loves Aziraphale’s tea. The Spawn of Satan is tea-blocking him.

“Okay, so what happens if Hell wins? Where do all the good blessed souls go?”

There’s a pause.  _ Aha, got you _ , he thinks. Aziraphale makes a quiet surprised sound on the other end of the line. “Well, I suppose… they get destroyed too.” 

“Mmmhmm. So, let me get this right. In eleven years, God has decided there will be a great war, led by the Antichrist, which will result in the destruction of either Heaven or Hell--maybe even both!--all of humanity, and the souls of the losing party. Blimey, sounds like a waste of the last 6,000 years, doesn’t it?”

“Well,” Aziraphale says, voice doing that thing when he tries to not say something blasphemous. It cracks, just a bit, pitch rising. “It’s the Great Plan. God is ineffable.”

“I hate that word,” Crowley says, grumping. 

“Yes, I know.”

“I hate you,” he adds.

“Of course, dear. Do call on me soon, will you?”

He hangs up the phone. He wants to tell Aziraphale, really. An angel would be useful in helping raise the Antichrist to be good and holy, but Crowley doesn’t want him exposed to all that Heaven propaganda either. He believes in goodness, but he doesn’t believe Heaven can be good. Humans are good. Angels are just mightier-than-thou with God complexes. They invented the term. 

And though Aziraphale has been trustworthy for the most part, it’s taken him ages to come around. Crowley had worked at him for centuries before he agreed to the Arrangement. They don’t have that kind of time now. They have just a little over a decade, in which Aziraphale might explode from guilt for keeping a secret from Heaven.

So. He can’t tell Aziraphale. On the other hand, he does miss his stupidity and the dining, and the copious amounts of drinking that follow the dining. Aziraphale had a point when he said they only have eleven years left, and they should make the most of it. Satan, he needs a drink.

What Crowley really needs is help. Human help. Somebody who knows how to do these baby things and can read baby morse-code, the little eye blinks and gurgling noises and uncoordinated coos. He likes those the best, but he can’t figure out what causes them. Sometimes Warlock just ahhs at him for no reason, just because he pops his head over the new playpen, and it makes his already serpentine legs turn to jelly. Other times he starts screaming at the sight of him, smacking his chubby arms into the soft and squishy pad of his pen.

“I don’t like you,” he tells Warlock. “I can’t. You’re going to kill me one day. Probably. You’re cute now, but soon you’ll be fussing when I don’t feed you the fresh blood of virgins every night.” 

Warlock burbles and sticks the corner of his blankie in his mouth. His little legs kick in unison, not yet aware they can move independently of one another. He looks like a rather happy beetle flipped over on its back. 

Crowley puts an ad on Craigslist in need of a babysitter, preferably full-time or at least a few hours a day--he needs sleep! Not technically, but nrrrgh--and possibly a few overnights. He needs evening availability on a weekly basis because drinking in the back of the bookshop is more fun when the lights are low. Aziraphale loses his glowy angelic edges a bit when he thinks no one is looking. Then he curses over the next 48 hours when he gets a series of spam emails and several people inquiring about nanny roleplaying. “Who even invented this garbage website anyway?” he asks. He pauses, puts his head in his hands, and sighs. “Yeah, nevermind. The spambots were a mistake.”

He gets three serious inquiries that he doesn’t rule outright. He holds interviews at a cafe twenty minutes from the flat to maintain an air of mystery and also gain access to copious amounts of caffeine. 

“Can you just fill it to the top with espresso?” He points to the largest cup. 

The spotty-nosed teenager behind the counter blinks at him. “That’s like, twelve shots.” Then he looks down and sees the baby-wrap carrier strapped to his chest, the barest bit of peach fuzz peeking out. 

Crowley frowns at that and hisses. “I know. Two of those, then.” The wrap, of course, is black with a little red stitching made by Versace of all places, but it still mucks up the silhouette of his outfit, the clean lines marred by a wailing lump strapped to his chest. Uppity housewives from the West End in yoga pants named Diane give him a sneering look of confusion before it morphs into  _ aw, that’s so adorable _ , and it makes him want to put superglue on all the door handles from here to Marleybone. 

He snatches the drinks off the counter and ignores the concerned look of the barista, taking over a window seat in the back corner so he can spy on the prospective nannies before they see him. The first to arrive is a young woman who walks with her bag clutched in front of her body like a shield. Timid. He looks down at her resume. Six years of experience watching the neighbourhood kids. They all probably snuck off behind her back to do drugs and bump uglies. How many local teenage pregnancies happened under her watch? She looks like she might blow over with a good strong breeze, and who knows what sort of weight the Antichrist will be throwing around in six months, a year from now. 

"No," he says before she even sets her purse down. 

The second candidate is better, a young fellow who looks strong and good-natured. The fact that he's a man doesn't surprise Crowley beyond the fact that not many men are in the profession. 

"I'm the oldest of three boys, helped raise my two younger brothers when my mom passed. I got pretty good at it, I guess."

Crowley eyes him from behind his glasses, tipping back his duodecuple shot espresso. "Are you religious?"

The man pauses. "Eh, not so much anymore. I grew up in the Church of England but had some questions as I got older. You know how it is."

Crowley does. "And when can you start?"

"As soon as possible, but I'll be leaving for Australia at the end of winter. I'm trying to save up some money so I can move out and be with my girlfriend."

"Charming." Crowley grimaces. He'll have to think it over. He hopes for something a little more permanent. He can't have a rotating plethora of sitters in case Warlock does something weird. It's much easier to do damage control if there's only one… victim. "I'll think it over and let you know."

The last person to arrive is a shorter, older woman, hair gone grey and the shape of her relaxed around the edges. Motherly, Crowley thinks, and then, soft. At first glance, she looks like the perfect candidate for a caretaker, but he has no idea what Warlock will grow into.

“Ashwini Hannigan,” she says, reaching out to shake his hand. “But you can call me Ash.”

“Hindu, is it?” Crowley asks. “Means ‘bringer of light.’”

“I’m impressed,” she says with a smile, taking a seat across from him. “Not a lot of people speak Hindi. I’m not fluent myself, but my mother named me.”

“Do you practice still?” he asks.

“It’s not so much a practice but a way of life.”

Crowley likes the idea of Hinduism. There’s no real set doctrine or higher power, no eternal damnation. Everybody gets a chance to try and try again until they get it right, one life to the next. Followers are encouraged to ask questions and challenge authority to help deepen their understanding of the faith. 

“Is this the little guy?” she asks, leaning over the table. Warlock hasn’t made a peep through all of this, content for the moment to be tucked up against Crowley’s chest. It’s moments like these--few and far between--that make him think it’s not so bad. He could keep on doing this forever. “He’s darling.”

He moves on to his second cup of espresso. “For the moment,” he says.

“Oh, I know how that goes. I raised three of them myself. Utter shits, they were.” 

Crowley’s eyes widen at that, and then he brightens. “ _ Were they? _ ” he asks. “Do tell.” 

She laughs. It’s hearty, open and uncontained. “You’re new at this, aren’t you?” 

“That obvious, huh?”

“I sensed the desperation in your ad, and you have a look about you like the world is ending.” 

Crowley grins, letting his teeth show a bit, lowering his glasses so she can see the yellow his eyes peek out. He's pleased when she doesn’t seem frightened. “When can you start?”

“That’s it?” she asks, surprised. “You’re not going to ask me about my references or work experience?”

“I have a good feeling about you, and I have my means and ways of removal should it not be a good fit.”

Ash leans back in her seat and appraises him. He means it as a threat but finds himself on the wrong foot under her assessing gaze. “I’m sure you do,” she says. “I can start whenever you’re ready.”

“As a permanent position?” He makes a pained face at how needy that came out and morphs his mouth into a more appropriate snarl.

Unphased, she grins. “For as long as you’ll have me.” 

They hash out the details. She’ll come in the daytime from two until eight. “I’m single, retired, and I like my mornings to myself. Please and thank you,” she says. They shake on it. 

Buzzing with energy and high on relief, he exits the cafe and takes the long way home through St. James Park, ignoring the coos from white, middle-aged moms. Several women stop to lean close to Warlock in a not-so-subtle attempt to grab his bum, and he lets out a very undignified yelp the first time it happens. “For Hell’s sake,” he mutters. 

Warlock stirs to life around the time they pass the pond, and he turns so he can see the ducks swim by. “These fellas are fun to drown,” Crowley tells him and is about to demonstrate before he stops and sighs. “I mean, they’re not, and you’re not evil, and I am definitely not going to teach you how to be evil. They are God’s creatures and yada yada yada.” He swallows down bile just saying it. Then he miracles up some bread crumbs and chucks it in the water. Warlock burbles at the ducks as they swarm around the food, wiggling against Crowley’s chest in an attempt to break free from the confines of his wrap.

Crowley cups the back of his head, mesmerized by how his little skull fits in the palm of his hand. On instinct, he presses his nose to his crown and inhales. “You’re trouble,” he tells him. “Hell, I’m in trouble.”

Ash starts the next afternoon, marching in to take one look at the pile of unpacked eBay shipments, an open bag of diapers spilt on the floor, and a chaos of packaging peanuts scattered everywhere. “Oh no,” she says. “Where’s the little one?”

Crowley points to an empty cardboard box filled with peanuts where Warlock rolls around, delighted. “He’ll choke on those,” she says, tsking.

“Will he? That’d be a shame.” 

“I can’t decide which one of you will be more work,” she mutters and hoists Warlock up. In an instant, she’s enchanted by his big brown eyes. His head of hair has started to grow in dark patchy tufts spattering his scalp. He goes for her glasses. 

She helps assemble the crib and organize the blankets and sheets, looking baffled at the sheer quantity of stuff he ordered. Then she unpacks the palette of baby formula and organizes it in the cupboard. She peers into the empty refrigerator. “Do you not eat?” she asks. Then she looks him over and rolls her eyes. “Who am I kidding? Of course you don’t.” 

Crowley just grunts in response.

It takes them three days to organize and unpack everything, and she forces him to march down to Tesco and buy real food. “He needs to see you make healthy choices. You’re a role model for him.” 

“I have to eat?” he complains. 

“And you’ll want to rearrange the flat. It’s not very kid-friendly, is it? All that marble counter space and tile floors. Babies want soft. Babies want texture. You can make it a fun environment for him to crawl around and explore.” She throws a package of salad in his shopping cart and a bag of apples. “Have you thought about where he’s going to sleep? He’ll need his own room eventually.”

Crowley orders ten different furniture catalogues and spends a day wandering through IKEA on the verge of a panic attack. What sort of Art Deco does a baby like? And why does every piece of furniture and toy have to come in the most absurd combination of colours? He needs darker sunglasses or maybe just an eye mask to survive walking through the showroom. He exits exhausted, shaking, holding a small houseplant and a bag of Swedish meatballs. 

“Don’t say anything,” he says to Ash when he returns. 

On Friday he comes around the sofa where Ash folds laundry. She had taken his credit card and bought a handful of little onesies with animal print and sea creatures plastered all over them, and one that reads “Daddy’s Little Devil.” Then she showed him how to shove Warlock’s wiggling limbs in all the right holes and told him he couldn’t just walk around naked forever. 

“Look, do you mind if I pop out for a bit? I’ll be back by eight, I promise,” Crowley asks. He feels absurd saying it. He’s never asked permission for anything in his life yet feels contrite and nervous about asking Ash.

“Isn’t that why you hired me?” she asks, looking up at him. She takes in his expression and sets down the laundry, folding her hands in her lap. “You need your me-time too. That’s very important as a parent.” Then she shoos him. “Go!”

He escapes out the door in record time, fearful she might change her mind or Warlock will combust without him. He makes a mad dash to the bookshop and swings open the front door. Before Aziraphale can shout, ‘We’re closed!’ he yells, “Alcohol! I need alcohol!”

Aziraphale pops up from around a corner and gasps. “Oh, Crowley! What have they done to you?”

He shakes his head, staggering inside. “Just wine. Give me wine please.” He knows how he looks, ragged, clothes askew, hair a mess. He probably smells a bit. 

Aziraphale rushes to him and guides him to a sofa in the backroom, miracling up a bottle of a red blend. He’s smart enough not to waste the good stuff on him, and rightly so when Crowley uses a sharp elongated nail to pry out the cork to drink straight from the bottle. “Wake me up at 7:30, yeah?” he says, and passes out.

Crowley jerks away an hour two later to a hand on his shoulder. He bats it away on instinct, curling into a tight ball with his feet on the cushions. “Lemme be.” The handshakes him again, and he opens one slitted eye, gleaming in the low light of the lit fire, to find Aziraphale peering over him. 

The angel is illuminated like out of some Romantic-era painting, fuzzy around the edges, backlit by candlelight. Nng, Crowley thinks. He’s never good at controlling his runaway brain upon first waking. He blinks a bit, unsticking his tongue from the roof of his mouth. “Wha’ time izzit?”

“Just after seven,” Aziraphale says, voice a low murmur. He moves to sit next to Crowley on the couch, crossing his legs and folding his hands in his lap. “Are you quite all right?”

“Yeah, fine.” Crowley rights himself and fumbles for his glasses jammed between the cushions. He stills, thinking over Aziraphale’s words. They don’t do this. They don’t ask each other  _ how they are. _ They ‘accidentally’ run into each other—as accidental as two magnets on a collision course from separate corners of a sandbox destroying every toy car and sandcastle in their paths—and get sloshed beyond reason so they don’t have to talk about  _ how they are _ . He straightens himself and puts on his frames, running his tongue over his teeth. “All right, I’ll bite. What’s going on?”

Aziraphale fidgets with his fingers and looks down at his shoes, then back up again. He does that thing where he tries and fails to be subtle about staring from the corner of his eye, and it makes Crowley’s jaw clench. “It’s just that you have baby powder on your cheek, and you smell like spit-up. You didn’t do what I think you did, did you?”

“I rarely ever do what you think I did, so no.” He jolts awake like getting electrocuted, buzzing on high alert. “No kidnapped babies here,” he announces. 

Aziraphale blinks at him, gaze turned on him like a floodlight. “I didn’t say a word about kidnapping babies.”

Shit fuck fuck shit. “Yeah, of course, because there aren’t any.”

“Oh Crowley.” 

“Nnngpfff. Don’t ‘oh, Crowley!’ me. You just jump to conclusions, you and every other angel in Heaven. Piss off.”

“Wherever did you get a baby from?”

And oh. Oh, blessed Aziraphale, always so smart but just as stupid. Crowley lights up when he realizes he doesn’t know he has the Antichrist. “It’s just some demonic intervention. That’s all.”

Aziraphale gasps at this, clenching his hands into fists and shaking them. He flusters for a moment. “You can’t just take somebody’s baby! Just for the sake of Hell’s bidding!”

“Ehhh, the parents are evil anyway. Not going to the good place, that’s for sure. I gotta punish the parents somehow, and the kid’s all right.”

The angel looks about, thinking it through. Then he relaxes. “Ah yes, you have always been quite soft on kids.” 

Crowley bristles. “I’m not soft on them. Rubbish.” He ignores the little smile Aziraphale gives him, blathering on as if his mouth is just strung by wires, disconnected from his brain “I mean, I might be just a bit, but they don’t deserve damnation and all that. They haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Not yet.”

“Not ever.” 

Aziraphale quiets at that, thoughtful. “Well, you obviously can’t keep it, not long-term. A baby needs a loving, stable family, and good adult examples. Structure.”

Crowley pains at that. Can’t he keep Warlock? He could give him those things. Stability, regular sleeping hours, food and shelter. Mental stimulation and unlimited access to the Discovery Channel. Those are good things, right?

“I have a nanny,” he blurts out, uncertain. “And a crib and a year’s worth of formula. He as a onesie with puppies on it.” 

“Oh.” 

“And I’m thinking about turning the office into a nursery. It’s an ugly desk anyway, and I never watch the telly in there. I like the throne though so that’ll have to go somewhere. IKEA has these little bedspreads with ducks and elephants on them.” 

“Oh, I see.” 

“And he likes to grab my glasses and chew on the arms so I’ve already bought ten extra pairs. I ate a sandwich in front of him this morning. Oohhh, and I ordered carpet. They’re installing it on Monday.” 

Aziraphale sits in silence for several seconds, still as a painting, like one of those Romantic ones awash in light. Crowley can feel his own heartbeat pound in his chest, and he lets out an unexpected uncontrollable hiss, the fork of his tongue making an appearance of its own volition. “Does he have a name?” Aziraphale asks.

“Warlock.”

The angel rolls the name on his tongue, sounding out each syllable with care. “A sorcerer, one who aligns oneself with the Devil, a traitor.”

“Or,” Crowley says, voice thick, “it could just mean ‘a caller of spirits.’” 

“Ah,” Aziraphale says. “Quite right. Can I meet him?”

This is how they end up walking the fifteen minutes from Soho to Mayfair at a quarter-to-eight, hands in the respective pockets, shoulders bumping with each ambling step. They reach the front door to the complex, and Crowley feels nervous, hands shaking when he goes to jerk open the door. They find Ash waiting with her feet propped on the round coffee table they’d swapped out a few days ago with  _ The OC  _ on, Warlock bundled against her chest.

“Just in time, Mr Crowley,” she says and stands. She beams when she sees his guest and extends her hand. “Hi, I’m Ash.”

Aziraphale grins just as bright, shaking it with two hands. “Pleasure to meet you, Nanny Ash.”

She gives Crowley a look, and he knows the exact assumption she makes about them both. He spikes a bit on the inside at that. How can everyone come to that conclusion about the two of them with the exception of Aziraphale himself?

Ash passes Warlock to Crowley who takes him with an expert arm, cradling him in the crook of his elbow. He’s still small enough that he fits in the entire length of his forearm, and he can hold him without a second hand. Aziraphale, who is notorious for being terrible with infants, does not try to take him but simply leans over, the curls of his hair brushing Crowley’s cheek. “Hello there, little master,” he says.

Warlock loves meeting new people. He loves getting stopped by little old ladies as Crowley pushes him down the street and by cashiers at Tesco and the neighbour who lives downstairs. Aziraphale is no exception, and he looks up with curious eyes, brown and gleaming, and his little mouth parted in awe. 

“First time looking at an angel, hmm?” Crowley says, running a finger over his nose. Warlock’s mouth spreads into a smile, gummy and wet.

Crowley feels an indescribable sensation rush through, shock and alarm, excitement and giddiness bubbling up inside. “Oi!” he shouts, turning to Ash. “He’s smiling! Has he done that for you yet?”

Ash shakes her head and comes around to coo at Warlock. “Look at you,” she says. “Your first smile!” Then she pats Crowley on the cheek. “I’ll be off then if you’re all right.” Crowley doesn’t even blink, staring at Warlock.

“What a dear,” Aziraphale says as the front door clicks shut. 

He straightens up and looks around the flat. Crowley doesn’t even notice right away, too absorbed in replaying that soft little smile, the stretch of Warlock’s mouth in his first grin. When he does catch sight of Aziraphale, he pauses, worried by the expression he sees. “I know you think I’m making a mistake.” 

Aziraphale shrugs and shakes his head, flummoxed. “I’m not sure what to think if I’m honest.” His eyebrows meet in the middle and he fidgets with his bowtie, moving to straighten his lapels. “I’m trying to see the nefariousness in all of this, but you really care.” He gestures at the flat, turning in a slow circle as though stunned.

And then the words come tumbling out of Crowley’s mouth without permission before he even realizes how he feels. “The world’s going up in flames, angel,” he says, voice creaking against his will. “I just want to do one good thing before my reckoning.” His throat catches, and he shifts Warlock in his arms, raising him higher and closer to his chest. 

“Yes, I believe you. Whether you can is the question.” Then Aziraphale pauses, looking upward. Crowley knows that look, the look of an angel about to do something questionable, going against his very nature and doctrine. “I could help you, I suppose.” 

Crowley hisses at that though he knows the risks. The end of the world is at stake, right in the palm of his hands. He should accept Aziraphale’s help, but he also wants to prove that he can do it on his own. This is his, his choice, his success, and his failure. Then again, Warlock needs all the good influence he can get. 

Ground rules, then. Dos and don’ts for both of them. 

“I agree. With conditions.” Aziraphale gestures him to go on. “None of that holy moly mumbo jumbo stuff. Ah--” Crowley throws a hand up when Aziraphale starts to protest. “It should be for him to decide as he grows older.”

He receives a withering, suspicious look. “And you’ll leave him the freedom to choose sides?”

“You know me, I’m all about free will.” And, he thinks in his head, why does there need to be a side anyway? If Aziraphale thinks the baby is human, and Crowley raises him in the most human fashion possible, why should he have to choose between Heaven and Hell? He could be a Pastafarian. He could not believe in anything at all. Good deeds should hold merit on their own instead of needing a crazy doctrine to validate or vilify them.

He continues. “I get the final say. That’s not to say I don’t value input because Satan knows I need it, but I ultimately get to make the final decisions, and against everything holy and unholy, should anything happen-- _ anything _ \--you will help protect him at all costs.” 

He’s never thrown down terms like this before. It’s always been Aziraphale throwing up hands, setting boundaries on their Agreement, vacillating on every decision. The lists he makes when weighing the pros and cons for dinner fill whole notebooks. 

They’re not fair terms. Crowley knows this. He’s an expert at making deals after all, trading souls for immediate rewards and much more dire consequences. Aziraphale doesn’t know Warlock is the Antichrist. He doesn’t know that by agreeing to this, he could be damned. He could just as well be commended for converting the Spawn of Satan to the light, but they won’t know if they’ll succeed until the very end. There’s a risk either way. Crowley knows for sure he’s fucked for betraying Hell. 

His motivation throughout time has been to protect Aziraphale at all costs, but in a few short months his whole world has shifted to orbit around this little creature, this small and helpless thing who will someday grow into a terror.

Aziraphale thinks it over, the minutiae of his face shifting as he goes over each of Crowley’s demands. “I don’t see how I wouldn’t want to protect a child. Of course, I’ll protect him.”

The Great Flood comes to mind. “You say that now.” 

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” Aziraphale says, perceptive as ever. “I can’t figure out what though.”

“Would I ever lie to you?” Crowley asks.

Aziraphale spares him a look, fond but the sort of look reserved for a somewhat dim child. “Perhaps not directly but definitely by omission. You’re omitting right now.”

“Those are the terms. Take it or leave it.”

“And if I leave it, will I not see you for the next eighteen years?” 

They both let the question hang between them, heavy. They’ve gone longer without interacting but never by design. “To be fair, there’s a high chance this all burns up in an ugly war between our two sides before he ever sees adulthood. You might be the one to end me.”

“Oh, never, my dear,” Aziraphale says, posture collapsing at the thought. With that decided, he says, “I agree to your terms. Call on me whenever you need.” He extends a palm, and Crowley takes it with his free hand, a spark lighting off between their palms to signify the binding of the new Agreement. 


	2. Part II

Crowley doesn’t expect it to be easy raising the Antichrist, but it stuns him how fast the time passes. In the first four months, Warlock doubles in weight and stretches out as if made from pulled elastic. He doesn’t look demonic, per se, just weird. Every day he changes, a little less pudgy and a little more defined in the face. 

“I thought they’re supposed to look less alien-like as they get older?” Crowley says, holding him under the armpits away from his body. He brings him over to Nanny Ash and scowls

“Nuh-uh,” she says, without looking up from her book. She peruses a Pottery Barn catalogue from her position the sofa, feet up on the coffee table. “I’m busy helping you find something suitable for this ghastly flat.”

“This flat is designer, thank you.” He drags the portable changing table with a free hand and kicks it open with his foot as he works the onesie down off of Warlock’s body. The baby makes a series of unintelligible ooh ooh ooh noises. “Really, you don’t say?” he says to him. “The ducks did  _ what _ at the park today?” 

Warlock giggles.

He makes quick work of the diaper and ties it off, throwing it in the new bin. Through trial and error, he discovers disposing diapers via magic does not get rid of the lingering poo smell the way that putting it in the trash does, and Warlock never is as clean and baby-soft after waving a hand at him as he is when Crowley gives him a proper bath (though there are times when waving a hand at him is immediate and necessary). Care, it seems, takes work. 

He turns on the stereo and then puts Warlock down for tummy time on his favourite blanket with the ducks and stretches out beside him so they’re eye-to-eye. He wasn’t there when Warlock was in the womb (he still hasn’t figured out yet if there even was a womb), but he’s determined to get him into music. If he couldn’t introduce him to Freddie Mercury during prenatal development, he sure as hell can start now. Warlock lifts his head up and coos, rocking side-to-side. 

“There you go,” Crowley says as he supports him with one hand under his belly. Warlock tries to push himself up, jamming out to ‘We Will Rock You.’ He’s close to learning how to roll over all by himself, a month early even. 

Aziraphale keeps a little milestone book, recording when Warlock first lifts his head and when he first turns in curiosity at a new sound. He stops by at least weekly, often more, with tea for Nanny Ash and espresso for Crowley, to reads to Warlock. He accumulates a suitable collection of books which withstand chewing and provide a variety of stimulating textures, colours, and vocabulary. Warlock likes it when he does the voices. Sometimes, when either one of them has to pop out for a job from their respective home offices, and every Thursday night, Nanny Ash stays late and shoos Crowley out the door, telling him to “spend some time with your young man, for goodness’ sake.”

Aziraphale is neither young nor his man, but Crowley bites his tongue. 

Crowley has never spent so much time around Aziraphale without the excuse of the old Arrangement. It unnerves him. They’ve known each other for 6,000 years so he doesn’t know why the butterflies have started in on him now. 

“Let’s go see Othello, I say.” Aziraphale claps his hands together as they walk past the National Gallery after dinner. 

“Aw, no. I hate the sad ones. How many times have you seen Othello anyway? At least a hundred. I’d rather go see that one with drag queens. Priscilla whatsit?” 

“Oh, it’s too new age for me. It’s got that  _ pop _ music.” He says it with disgust, like a Victorian maiden with the vapours.

Crowley rolls his eyes, using his whole head so Aziraphale knows just how far back his eyes go despite the sunglasses “They’ve got Motown music in it. That’s at least 40 years old now. Old enough for you.” He doesn’t add it also incorporates a heavy amount of Cyndi Lauper and Madonna. Aziraphale protests outright if something involves the 80s. 

They settle on Othello, and Crowley splurges on the watered-down overpriced drinks from the theatre bar just so he has something to occupy his hands. The show entrances Aziraphale the moment the curtain lifts, and he doesn’t notice how Crowley spends the majority of the time staring to his right instead of at the stage. “Oh, I just love how he delivered his lines. ‘I kiss’d thee ere I kill’d thee: no way but this…’”

“‘Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.’”

Aziraphale beams at him. “So you did pay attention.”

Crowley, who has also seen it a hundred times, just smiles. “Shall we?” 

Warlock sits up at six months which invites a whole new world for him to explore. He starts reaching for things, demanding and wailing, while Crowley hustles around the flat for whatever it is he needs. “Oh no, he has you whipped,” Nanny Ash says with a shake of her head. 

Crowley scoffs. He’s not…  _ whipped _ . “I’m not a pushover,” he says, holding a ball, a bottle, two stuffed animals, and a rubber duck, all of which Warlock has discarded. The screams continue. 

“Have you seen Priscilla, Queen of the Desert yet?” 

“What does that have anything to do with anything?” Crowley asks.

Ash tuts and redirects Warlock with expert ease to a different toy. “Nothing,” she says. “You need to set boundaries for him though or else he’s going to wail whenever he doesn’t get what he wants. You don’t want a demon child on your hands.” 

This is the exact thing to say. Crowley takes this to heart and spends the next week practising saying, “No,” and “Not yet,” and, “How about this instead?” He hides the remote and his phone and the tablet and puts a baby gate up in the study so Warlock can’t wiggle onto the throne and brain himself by falling. 

He plans to renovate the room into a second bedroom soon. He swears it. And he still hasn’t figured out quite how to say ‘No’ to Aziraphale with the same efficiency. 

Child-rearing takes a lot of effort, and even with his demonic gifts, a nanny, and a guardian angel, he is exhausted. He is, surprisingly, also much more delighted than he expected. For some minutes at a time, he even forgets Warlock is the Antichrist, though those moments are fleeting.

He gets calls from work too, often from Hastur who takes special glee in sending him on the dullest excursions. He always interrupts Freddie Mercury just before the chorus and creates the most ear-splitting frequency of static before coming through. It reminds him of the sound of dial-up internet. Crowley should have gotten a commendation for that one. 

“Got a job for you in your old pride and joy, Manchester.” 

Crowley sputters. “Pffft. Manchester is its own special brand of hell. They don’t need me there. I’m busy, anyway.” He sits Warlock in his lap and covers his ears. “Don’t listen to anything Hastur tells you,” he murmurs. “He smells worse than your baby shit.”

“What was that?”

“Nothing! What’s the point of collecting souls anyway when the apocalypse is happening in the next decade?”

“I'll convey your concerns to Beelzebub, but in the meantime, if you don’t go I’ll send up Gaap. You know how that went last time.” 

“Blegghh. Fine.”

Crowley catches himself looking over his shoulder less and less and instead looks down at Warlock as he crawls across the floor. He installs soft plush carpets in heather grey to match the elephant theme, accented with yellow ducks. He moves the desk out into the living area and the playpen into the office, and he and Aziraphale spend the afternoon painting the nursery a sky blue with teal accents, miracling away the little smudges along the edging. He even allows Aziraphale to paint the washboards a cornflower yellow, and in a peak of irony, he miracles up some sponges and paints an apple tree and a flock of birds in the corner above the crib. Da Vinci would hate it, he thinks. Good. And then he adds some clouds. 

When Warlock starts walking, they wobble through St. James Park, and Nanny Ash packs a little lunch filled with sugar snap peas and apple slices slathered in peanut butter. Warlock fusses and doesn’t like to eat much, so Crowley lies down on his stomach at eye level and makes a big show of eating his fruit. He hates it but thaws when Warlock dips his finger in the peanut butter and licks it off. He adds a splash of juice to his water, and they teeter along the pond, practising the arduous task of holding a sippy cup while putting one foot in front of the other all at the same time. 

Warlock likes blocks. Warlock likes dinosaurs. Warlock likes to run his superhero action figures into the blocks and dinosaurs. He makes loud, high pitched wails like sirens and hissing explosions, the whooshing sound of water as the fire truck comes to put out the imaginary fires. For weeks and weeks after he turns one, they wait for him to start talking, but he doesn’t say a word. 

He gets really good at pointing. That one. That one. Not that one. That one. On occasion, he will nod yes, but he is an expert and shaking his head no. 

Dinner becomes an outright battle. Warlock grazes on things, only taking a bite at a time before wiggling out of his chair. If they strap him down he screeches and the food goes flying everywhere. He shakes his head. No no no no no. It frustrates Nanny Ash to no end. She always accuses Crowley as though he gets it from him, but he sees it for what it is. Warlock is particular about everything, from the fabric of his clothes to his favourite scratchy-soft blanket. It doesn’t matter if they set boundaries because he can out stubborn them all. 

One night after Ash leaves, Warlock falls asleep against Crowley’s chest, refusing to lie down in his crib. After attempting twice to set him down only for him to wake up wailing, they retire together to the living room where Crowley can watch mindless HGTV to pass the time. “It’d almost be cute,” he tells the sleeping toddler, “if I didn’t know you plan to kill me one day.” He bites back a smile and wipes a smear of drool stuck to his shirt. 

The morning after Warlock first sleeps through the night for a whole week, Crowley wakes up to sunlight and the smell of fresh scones, the sound of Aziraphale putzing about the kitchen after letting himself in, and he blinks with bleary eyes up at the ceiling. Normalcy. So this is what it feels like. Never has he spent seven whole days in a row without fretting over something, be it Hell's summons or whatever nonsense the angel gets into. It's been peaceful, and he catches himself enjoying it. 

He hears the beginnings of a tantrum, Warlock trapped still in his crib. He’s going to figure out how to tip it over one of these days, despite Crowley's best efforts to bolt the damn thing down. The soft shuffle of Aziraphale’s shoes on the carpet passes his bedroom, and he hears that lilting voice say, “Good morning, Master Warlock. My, you’ve grown in the last week.”

Warlocks lets out a series of incomprehensible syllables, letting Aziraphale know just how disappointed he is in this morning’s service so far, to which the angel apologizes, and they shuffle out into the kitchen together for scones from the bakery off of Marleybone. 

Aziraphale, Crowley knows, is the source of Warlock's problem with food. He stuffs the kid with carbs at any given moment. If it’s not scones, it’s croissants and little petit fours from the patisserie around the corner from the bookshop. It ruins him for all other foods. Crowley has to sit there pretending to enjoy raw carrots and pureed spinach and little trees of broccoli that always stick in his teeth, and then that angelic bastard sneaks in and feeds the kid pastries. 

Well, when in Rome, he supposes, and rolls out of bed. 

“Ba da ba da ga ba da ba,” Warlock says, hoisting himself up on the barstool. He reaches for a scone and eats it off the table, breaking it apart and shoving his fingers into his mouth up to the second knuckle. He raps his sticky fingers on the countertop and continues his chant.

Aziraphale turns around from messing with the espresso maker and sets a cup down in front of the empty stool. “Good morning. I see you’ve been exercising sloth this morning.”

“Da da da da da,” Warlock says.

“It’s not that late, is it? We don’t get up before eight around these parts.” 

“Scone?”

“Lovely, thanks.”

“Dada dada dada,” Warlock says, tugging on Crowley’s sleeve.

Crowley shoves a bite of scone in his mouth, perhaps as messy as the Prince of Darkness, and leans over to plant a kiss on the top of his head. He leaves a trail of crumbs in the toddler’s dark swatch of hair and brushes it out with his hand.

“Dada!” Warlock says. 

Crowley stills and goes very quiet, mouth agape. “I’m sorry, what?” 

Aziraphale lets out a startled sound, tossing his breakfast on the counter. He waves his hands in the air for a moment panicked. “Where’s the book? The baby book?”

“Now hold on. Don’t get your knickers in a twist. He’s just babbling. He makes noises all the time,” Crowley says, though he can’t deny the fluttering feeling high in his throat. 

Warlock shoves another bite in his mouth and grins, crumbs spilling from the corners of his mouth. He beams at him and says, “Dada.” He has a smear of blueberry streaked across his cheek. 

Crowley blinks. “Oh, right then.” And then with a slow, dawning smile, he says, “You’re right, I’ve been very rude. Good morning to you. Tell me all about your sleep.”

After that breakfast, Warlock says it all of the time. He says it in the morning or when something exciting happens on The Wiggles. He says it when he finds a snail or shouts it after the ducks come chasing after his bread in the park. He says it when Crowley saunters in five minutes before eight--a bit tipsy from dinner--drowsy and clingy as Nanny Ash passes him over for bed. 

“Hello, Warlock,” Crowley says to him. “Hello, Adversary, Destroyer of Duplos, and Angel of the Bottomless Stomach." He sways them back and forth, nose buried in the crown of his hair. He's still quite a bit drunk on sake from Aziraphale's favourite sushi place. "Hello, Prince of My World.” 

It’s cliche to say Warlock grows like a weed. Crowley likens him more to a sunflower, leaves spreading out and tilting towards the sun, blossoming bright and golden. He stretches out into a gangling, ambling child whose limbs are just a touch too long, his face a bit too angular. He is one constant bruise, always falling over and tripping himself up, clumsy as can be. It’s endearing, just a bit. He has a long face, sallow and pale, that brightens every time he smiles.

His hair grows in thin and dark, straight as a feather. He hates haircuts but fusses whenever his fringe falls in his eyes. It becomes a magnet for spaghetti sauce and playdough and biscuit crumbs, a constant source of frustration for both Crowley and Nanny Ash, and whenever he tries to miracle it shorter, it comes out choppy with an unruly cowlick in the back. 

“Just let him be,” Aziraphale says, patting Crowley’s forearm.

Warlock bumps into the corner of the door on his way out of the bathroom, and Crowley groans. “He can’t see a thing.” And then, “Did you wash your hands? Go wash your hands.”

Warlock hits the door again with his shoulder on his way back in, and Aziraphale squeezes his arm.

They’ve been doing this more too, touching, or it’s more like Aziraphale pats him or cups his elbow as he passes, and Crowley does everything he can not to fall over himself. Aziraphale is the sun, and Crowley is his own flower--a nightshade perhaps--leaning into the warmth, ever afraid to get too close or else get singed.

Once he’s old enough, Warlock starts tagging along with them on Thursday nights for dinners, and Nanny Ash gets the evenings off. He becomes a connoisseur of all types of foods and cuisines, from Indian (Ash’s influence) to Japanese and Italian (Azirphale’s doing). Crowley takes to putting together little meals at home as well. He sets Warlock atop a barstool on his knees and gives him little tasks like breaking apart lettuce leaves and broccoli heads.

“When you agreed to help be a good influence, I didn’t expect it’d come in the form of eating vegetables,” Crowley says one night in the kitchen. He and Ash are assembling a simple meal, leftover curry chicken and a fresh salad while Aziraphale and Warlock sample the ingredients. 

Aziraphale steals a piece of julienned carrot with dainty fingers and shares with Warlock. He pops it in his mouth and lifts his eyebrows in exaggerated delight. “Mmmm,” he says. Then he swipes behind Warlock’s ear and procures another piece, as though by magic. Warlock claps.

“Don’t encourage him,” Crowley says to Warlock, slicing tomatoes with slow precision, hissing at them when they don’t come out in even oblong discs the way they do on the telly. He tosses the rejects into Warlock’s mouth across the island which sets the boy in a fit of giggles every time he misses. 

Nanny Ash whaps him with the back of her spatula. “I’m not washing tomato stains out of that,” she scolds.

Ignoring her, he leans over to whisper to him, “The carrot was up his sleeve.”

“Oh hush, it was not! It was  _ magic _ .”

Warlock grins and nods. “Magic!” he shouts, clapping.

Crowley glares at Aziraphale over the rims of his glasses. “Look at what you’ve done.”

Still, he ends up buying Warlock a little magic kit for kids. He argues if he’s going to get into magic, he better do it right. He and Aziraphale sit on the carpet for an hour at a time, practising disappearing little sponge bunnies, and Crowley watches them from behind the couch, feigning disinterest as Warlock whines when his little hands can’t curl completely around the bunnies to hide them. The first time he convincingly disappears and reappears a quarter, Aziraphale claps the loudest and scoops him up, swinging him up high. Crowley hides his smile behind the catalogue he’s reading. 

Crowley finds him in his bedroom one day spread out on his stomach stacking his duplos. He’s ready for the real Legos, he thinks, which makes his chest clench at the thought. Who knew little plastic blocks lurking in the shadows waiting to be stepped on would make him nostalgic and protective? “I invented Legos, you know,” he tells Warlock. 

“You did not.”

“We’ll have to go shopping for some now that you’re big enough.”

Warlock beams at that and looks over his shoulder. “Really?”

“Yeah, sure, why not,” Crowley says, nonchalant. He pushes his glasses up his nose to hide the aching surge of affection spilling out from every corner. “Sit up. Criss-cross applesauce and all that.” 

“Can you show me how to build that bridge again?”

“Only if you sit upright.”

They spend the next hour creating an elaborate contraption involving a castle and an imaginary moat. Warlock pushes his boats under the little bridge, crashing into the posts with glee so that the whole thing collapses. Then he gets to work, rebuilding it just a touch different each time, a little taller or a little sturdier. 

After a while, he pauses with his Captain America action figure--double the size of the castle and on its way to King Kong crush it--and says, “Nanny Ash says I’m ready for school.”

Crowley stills mid-battle. He has a transformer in one hand walking a Paw Patrol police dog in the other on their way to stop the great destruction of King Arthur’s castle. “What? No. That’s ages away yet. You have to be five.”

“I’m five in August!” Warlock says. 

He sputters. “You don’t even know what August is.”

“Well, Nanny Ash says that’s my birthday. Then I can go to school.” 

“But you’re not ready,” he argues, swallowing hard. He drops the action figures on the carpet. 

He realizes his mistake when he catches Warlock’s big brown eyes peeking out from under his fringe, wet and wide, his pale face sinking. “I wanna go to school.” His voice cracks as he says it, pitching high and creaking, and he inhales a shaky breath and wipes at his eyes, shoulders straight and chin lifted. Putting on a brave face. 

“When did you grow up?” Crowley asks out loud, stunned. “You’re turning five already?” 

Fuck. Six more years. He only has six more years until the end of the world, until the end of lullabies and making slime, and growing venus fly traps in the window for Warlock to feed and poke at. Shit shit shit. 

“I’ll think about,” he tells him. Warlock beams.

Thursday night after dinner, a little Spanish tapas bar that satisfies Warlock’s needs to pick at everything, Crowley walks them home and sobers up in preparation for the battle over bathtime. Aziraphale helps tilt Warlock’s hair back as he washes it, scolding at the boy when he spits, and they attack him with the fluffiest towels they can find until he’s giggling and happy again. Warlock leaps into bed, hugging his large stuffed animal of a duck while Aziraphale settles on a book. Crowley excuses himself to the kitchen in search of a bottle of wine.

Aziraphale finds him a half an hour later staring at the label of the wine bottle in his hand, corkscrew in the other hovering forgotten over the countertop. He comes around to the same side, leaning back against the work surface so that the sides of their hips and their forearms touch, and Crowley can feel his radiating warmth. Crowley has his glasses off, his eyes little orbs in the low light, caught out cat-like, wide and staring somewhere off in the distance. 

They do this now. They stand like this. They lean close together over the bathtub, wrestling a four-year-old with octopus limbs and the will of an ox. They press up close in the privacy of Crowley’s kitchen like they’re normal, two humans, two people who know each other without 6000 years of wiling and thwarting and centuries of absence.

“Penny for your thoughts?” 

“Nanny Ash says he’s ready for school,” he blurts out. “She has a list of primary schools nearby Mayfair. She wants to know if I want to send him to a public school.”

Aziraphale hmms at that. “It’s a bit late to register him for one of those.”

“I could get him in,” Crowley says, voice low and monotonous. 

“And what is that you want?”

He wants to lock him up forever, keep him here. He wants his mornings with him, sleepy and listless as they lounge on the furniture and watch cartoon reruns. He wants Thursday night dinners with Aziraphale and Friday movie dates with Nanny Ash. He wants chases in the park after the ducks. What they have is working. He’s so good. He’s kind. He’s gentle. Crowley’s seen what humans can do, and he wants none of it for Warlock. 

He can’t tell Aziraphale he’s afraid of the apocalypse. Nobody knows the truth but him.

“I won’t send him away,” he says.

“Assuredly not.”

“And I don’t know if the likes of Eton or Harrow would be a good fit.”

“I agree.”

“There’s a primary school just down the road, not even two blocks away.”

“You could walk him there in the mornings,” Aziraphale says.

“Yeah.”

“And pick him up from school. You’ll be just around the corner if he needs you.”

“Right.”

Aziraphale leans over so his shoulders stand between Crowley and the countertop. Crowley sets down the wine bottle and the corkscrew and wonders how he can manage it all, this constant fear and love and wonder for Warlock on top of all the longing and neediness he has for Aziraphale. It’s constant. 

“You’ll be alright,” Aziraphale says.

They lean into each other and Crowley presses their foreheads together, caving in. They don’t do this, this intimacy, not like this, and it hollows him out, fingers shaking. Aziraphale raises his hands to pull his shoulders so they’re chest to chest. “You’ll be alright,” he says again. Crowley nods.

They make a deal. If Warlock wants to go to school, he has to get a haircut and help pick out his uniforms. Crowley is horrible at estimating his sizes without him, but Warlock hates trying on clothes, so it always ends up in a meltdown in the middle of the department store. “Spoiled,” Nanny Ash reminds him, knowing full well that Crowley lacks any negotiating skills when it comes to children.

“Shake on it,” Crowley says to Warlock.

“But what’s a uniform? Why do I gotta have one?”

“‘Why do you  _ have _ to have one,’ and it’s because school requires it. They’re boring, drab pants and shirts that are probably black or blue.” Warlock, who’s fashion skews towards neon green and hot pink with those sequins that reverse when you flip them, scowls. “You don’t have to go to school,” Crowley reminds him. “Now go get your shoes.”

He comes back with his feet shoved into the wrong sides and the velcro somehow attached upside down and backwards. 

“Eh, good enough. Let’s go.” 

Nanny Ash sighs beside them and gestures at Warlock to sit down. She gets to work fixing it. “It won’t be so bad,” she tells him. “We’ll just pop into Harrods, grab what you need, and you can pick out your own backpack. Get something cool.” 

He’s into Paw Patrol right now, or maybe it’s still Captain America. Crowley can’t keep track. “And don’t forget about the haircut,” he adds. 

Warlock sits like an angel for the barber as if he hasn’t been screaming about his hair for the last year and a half. “I want to keep it long, like yours,” he tells the man who has his own hair pulled back from his face.

“Yes, Warlock,” Crowley says, voice dry. “But he can actually see what he’s doing.” Then he adds, “I invented the man bun, you know.”

Warlock rolls his eyes, a perfect replication of Crowley. “You did not.” 

They settle on a hairstyle that swoops in front of his face without covering his eyes, stopping just below the top of his ears, short in the back and one side like a fade. It’s very cool, the barber tells him, and Warlock agrees. 

On the way out of the barbershop, Crowley looks up and points heavenward and mouths, ‘I owe you one. I still don’t like you though.’

They return home with his uniform in quintuplicates, a Hulk backpack, balloons, and a banner that says Happy Birthday. Crowley plops Warlock on one of the barstools on his knees so he can get his hands messy in the cake batter while Nanny Ash supervises. They get lightheaded together inflating balloons.

In the evening, Aziraphale pops by with a great big wrapped present and a drawn-on moustache. Crowley groans on instinct and tries to shove him back out the door. “No magic!” he pleads.

“Yes magic!” Warlock shouts, which is how they end up sitting through a fifteen-minute horror show where Aziraphale drops the hidden coin twice on accident and still somehow manages to procure a new one behind Warlock’s ear. The boy cheers. 

Crowley comes around and leans into his ear. “Cheater,” he says. Aziraphale grins at him over his shoulder as they stand chest to back. 

Inside the box is a brand new magic kit for intermediate learners. Warlock’s gotten quite proficient at disappearing bunnies and revealing endless swathes of ribbon from his sleeves. “I think you’re ready to learn more,” Aziraphale says. “But look inside. There’s something else.”

Warlock digs around in a sea of tissue paper and pulls out a neon green bike helmet. He plops it on his head. Then he turns around just as Crowley comes out of the hall with a matching neon bike with training wheels. The colour’s good for visibility, they had decided. 

Warlock squeals. “Wow cool!” He throws himself on it and crashes directly into the sofa. “I want streamers on the handlebars.”

“Alright,” Crowley says.

“And a basket!”

“Alright.”

“And pegs on the back!” 

Crowley grimaces. “Let’s wait on that one.” 

They sing ‘Happy Birthday’ off-key and dig into the cake. Aziraphale only finds one eggshell in his slice as Warlock announces, “I helped make it!” and Crowley can’t help but look around at the four of them in awe. He did this. They did this, this little unit huddled around this boy, and so far they’ve all survived, nobody worse for wear. They’re better for it, he thinks, or at least Crowley knows he is.

That night he tucks Warlock in and reads him  _ Make Way for Ducklings _ . It’s their favourite to do together, and Warlock won’t let anyone else but Crowley read it to him. He knows the story by heart and often falls asleep before the last page.

Crowley kisses the top of his head. “Goodnight, Gentle Beast, Devourer of Cake. Goodnight, Prince of My World.” He lingers, eyes closing as he takes in the weight of Warlock on his chest, breaths coming in little puffs, a speck of drool soaking his shirt. He’d give anything to keep this moment forever. Anything.

He returns to find Aziraphale standing in the middle of the living room staring at Crowley’s collection of vinyl, jacket off, rocking from his heels to the balls of his feet. He holds a half-drunk glass of red wine he must have helped himself to from the cooler, looking soft in the glow of the street lamps in his frayed, well-loved waistcoat. “All settled, my dear?” he asks.

“Pick something out, would you? What do you want to listen to?” 

Aziraphale hums and deliberates, always careful and slow with his decision-making, before selecting Benny Goodman. He still hasn’t figured out how to work a CD player, but he’s excellent at setting up the record player and getting the needle to land just-so. The swinging notes of the clarinet fill the space. 

“Do you know, I learned to dance once?” Aziraphale asks. 

Crowley approaches him and plucks the wine glass from his hands. He takes a sip. It’s the cabernet from the Italian vineyards they walked through in the 40s, just after the Second World War. He can’t imagine Aziraphale, of all people, dancing, and lets out an inquisitive sound. “Really.” 

"Yes, really," he says, a bit tetchy. "The gavotte, if you must know."

Crowley's eyebrows raise at that. He doesn't know how to do it himself, but he's heard of it. He makes it his business to know all about the seedy underbelly of London, and while the gavotte could have been described as innocent, the activities surrounding it were not. "I never learned it, but I'm not bad at a simple 1-2-touch step."

"Oh, swing dancing," Aziraphale says. "That's much too… much for me."

"Nonsense. Even little old ladies can do it." Crowley takes another sip of wine before passing it off for Aziraphale to finish. Then he moves it to the countertop and kicks the coffee table aside with his foot. The high notes of Benny Goodman's clarinet wail through the speakers. 

"C'mon," he says, grabbing Aziraphale's hands. They stand an arm's length apart. Crowley models a simple side to sidestep, followed by a rock step with his left foot. Left, right, rock-step. Step, step, rock-step. "Now you mirror me."

Aziraphale lets out a pleased little hum and flutters. They stumble through ‘Let’s Dance’ and get the hang of it around the faster-paced ‘One O’Clock Jump’ Aziraphale moves in contained little steps, incongruent with the loose-limbed style of swing-dancing, whereas Crowley is the opposite. Even with the simplified movements, he’s all arms and legs, shoulders and hips swaying, spine twisting. He pulls Aziraphale’s arm over his arm, guiding his torso into a spin, but his feet catch on each other. They stumble. 

Aziraphale lets out a little, “Oh!” and looks up to find him caught in Crowley’s arms. He rights himself, turning so he faces him, bringing his hands up to his chest. His cheeks flush pink. “Hello.”

“Alright there, angel?” Crowley keeps his arms wrapped in a tight embrace around Aziraphale’s shoulders and back. His body flushes, and he knows he must be redder than an apple.

“Mm, yes. Quite.” Aziraphale fusses with Crowley’s collar. The jazz continues in the background, a scratchy old recording live from Carnegie Hall. Crowley had been there, he thinks. Most of his collection comes from live recordings he once attended. Freddie Mercury. David Bowie. Louis Armstrong. He worries the fabric between his fingers. “I’ve been meaning to say, you’ve done well with Warlock.”

“Yeah?” 

“Just wonderful.” Crowley tucks his chin, letting out an incomprehensible mumble. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

“I said, you’ve helped us so much.” And then he adds, “Warlock loves you a lot.” He clears his throat and sends out a silent plead for his glasses. 

“Oh, I know. I can sense it. He loves you a great deal more.”

“Ah, uh.” 

“I can sense this too.” Aziraphale slides both of his hands up Crowley’s chest, over his shoulders and his neck to cup his face. It’s a sensual slide of skin on skin that steals Crowley’s breath. “Are you nervous?” he asks.

Crowley nods, emphatic. “Yes.”

“I mean about him starting school.”

Crowley, who has been fretting about school for the last three months nonstop, gives it the barest thought, so caught up in the heat of the angel’s hands on his face. “That too.”

It feels like they’re talking about two different things. School on Monday might go great. Warlock might make one hundred friends and get perfect scores and excel at every sport. Next week and next year may be a success. Rave reviews. It’s later that worries about. He should tell Aziraphale. He should tell someone, anyone. He stole the Antichrist and went off and loved him. 

Aziraphale lifts upwards the three inches it takes to close the distance between them and presses his mouth to Crowley’s, firm and dry, holding him there for a long moment. “We’ll be just fine,” he says, breath ghosting over Crowley’s skin.

Crowley keens, a whine low and throaty. He leans forward again to close the distance, parting his mouth. He kisses him in long slow presses, tentative with his teeth and tongue, listening for the soft hitches in Aziraphale’s breath. They crush against each other, chest and hips and knees slotting in place. They kiss until the vinyl runs out, replaced by static, and then they keep on for several moments more. 

“Don’t be scared,” Aziraphale reassures him.

Crowley lets out a broken laugh, raspy, his throat tight. “I’m scared of everything,” he says. 

“I know, but I don’t know why.”

“It’s just the way of the world, angel,” he tells him. Then he says, “You know what would make feel better?”

“Hmm?”

“If we went to see Priscilla.” 

Aziraphale tuts and rolls his eyes. “Yes, all right,” he relents, “but only because you’re sad.” 

Monday rolls around unbidden and unwelcomed, and if Crowley could ever stop time forever, he’d do it now. Warlock rises at five in the morning, a bundle of excitement. He buzzes around the flat and triple checks his backpack, his packed lunch, and his uniform. He switches his shoes three times. He has a meltdown five minutes before they have to leave over the velcro on his chucks, and Crowley feels like wailing right along with him. 

Nanny Ash sends him a text that says, “Buck up, Mr Crowley,” followed by a second one littered with an overabundance of emojis. “Good luck, Warlock!!!! My baby!!!! Have a wonderful first day at school!!!!”

Crowley reads it out loud in the most monotonous tone of voice, refusing to acknowledge anything with more than one exclamation point at the end of it. “Out the door with you or we’ll be late,” he says. 

Warlock gasps and grabs his backpack. “Run! C’mon!”

When they arrive at the school, Crowley walks him to the door of his classroom and nudges him through the entry. He leans against the doorframe, all casual-like, and waggles his fingers. Warlock takes three steps forward before turning around. “Dad?”

He pastes a smile on his face. “It’s all right, Great Beast. I’ll be here in the afternoon. Nanny Ash too.” 

Warlock takes it in, thinking it over. Then he lifts his chin and nods once, gripping the straps of his backpack. “Yeah, okay,” he says and turns around, running into the room. And that is that. Crowley stands there bereft until the teacher ushers him out, and then pulls his collar up and shoves his hands in his pockets, kicking rocks all the way home. 

He spends the morning doing all the demonic things he can’t get away with around Warlock because he wants him to grow up good and proper. He goes around peeling the ‘push’ stickers off of doors and slapping them on the wrong side and jams one of the turnstiles to the tube on Bond Street. He nicks a jacket from Alexander McQueen, a quilted suit coat with an intricate red paisley stitching and satin interior, looking the sales clerk in the eye with his glasses down on his way out of the shop. Then he makes his way to the bookshop to harass Aziraphale, chocolates in hand, but finds it closed and locked up, the angel out, so instead, he stands on the corner hailing and cancelling Lyft rides for an hour. He gets five of them to come around at once, and it causes a hellish traffic jam. 

He sighs and turns on his heel, walking back to Mayfair. 

“Ah, there you are,” Aziraphale says when Crowley walks back into his flat. “I was wondering where you got off to. It’s almost time to go get Warlock. Shall we?” 

Relieved, he nods. Yes. That. Let’s do that. Aziraphale pecks him on the cheek and leads him downstairs.

Nanny Ash meets them at the complex door on her way up, and they all stroll to the school together. She’s gotten a little older in the past few years, the wrinkles around her eyes deepening and her gait slowing, and she spends the walk chattering about her own children’s first days of school.

“But what did you do with yourself? When they were gone?” Crowley asks. “I don’t know what I did before.” 

She nods, wise and sage. “That happens. The first two weeks I binged on a lot of Hollyoaks and tried to catch up on my laundry and bookkeeping. By the time my youngest took his GCSEs, he was mostly self-sufficient so I was sleeping in until ten and having margaritas at noon.”

Aziraphale claps his hands. “That’s delightful.” 

“That’s sloth,” Crowley interjects. 

“Sounds right up your alley, then.” 

Warlock sees them before they see him. He stands in a swarm of children of all different ethnicities and colours reduced down to the very same uniform and height and starts jumping up and down, the swoop of his fresh haircut bouncing with every jump. “That’s my dad! That’s my dad!” he shouts, wiggling out of his class line.

The teacher turns around and has a half-second to yell, “Warlock!” before the boy comes barreling over, launching himself at Crowley who catches him mid-air. 

The teacher comes running, panting by the time she reaches him. She recognizes Crowley from the morning as she gets up close, sighing with relief. “Mr Crowley, is it?” she asks, extending her hand. “I’m Ms Amin.” 

Crowley, who has his hands full and can only stare at Warlock, pressing their noses together, ignores her. Aziraphale beams, however, and steps in. “Lovely to meet you, Ms Amin. Forgive him for being rude. First kid off to school, you see.” 

“Oh, ah, of course,” she says. Then she pats Warlock on the shoulder. “Tomorrow you have to wait in line until you’re dismissed, okay?”

Crowley blinks at that and says, “Oi, are you breaking rules already?”

“No!” Warlock shouts and then deflates. “I didn’t mean to.”

He gets a kiss on the cheek for that. “Well, that’s all right then. Tomorrow you’ll wait in line, yeah?”

“He’s a sweetheart, really,” Ms Amin says. “You have a lovely little boy.”

Crowley wakes him up every morning at six and fudges through breakfast. He hides the Leggo My Eggo waffles from Nanny Ash and lets Warlock have control of the chocolate syrup bottle. Then it’s a fight over washing his face and getting him into his school uniform. The clothes are his least favourite part, and Crowley catches him sneaking off with neon socks. He compromises by buying him the most obnoxious pairs of pants he can find for him to wear under his clothes, and he gets to change into his street outfit the minute he gets home. 

He walks him to school every morning, and by Friday Warlock dashes off the second they get to the gate, throwing a look and flippant handwave over his shoulder before darting off to the playground. Ms Amin comes around and pats his shoulder with a sympathetic look. “He’s fine, Mr Crowley.”

“Of course he is. Yeah. Totally.”

“You can’t stand here all day.”

“Can’t I?” He hasn’t blinked, eyes tracking Warlock as he scrambles up the jungle gym, no one there to catch him or give him a boost.

Ms Amin smiles, turning him gently away from the gate. “You could, but I’d have to call the cops.”

He’d like to see her try, he thinks, grunting. “Yeah, all right.”

He finds himself bereft, wandering around the flat, poking at the computer and trolling subreddits. His favourite is r/politics, and he maintains a complex network of fake accounts and sock puppets who spark flame wars. He is the genius behind Ken M. After finding him in his pants for the fourth day in a row, Nanny Ash suggests in a very kind and indirect way that maybe he should take up a hobby, maybe a job. Maybe he should ring up his nice man and go for a walk. 

He grimaces, putting on a clownish frown until she backs out of his bedroom with her hands up in placation. “I’ll just go get Warlock, shall I?” she asks.

Crowley stares at the computer screen for some minutes after the front door clicks shut and then sighs, caving into the inevitable. He pulls up Spotify, and in the middle of an ad, calls Hastur. 

“ _ \--and make sure to follow us on Twitter at… bzzz…  _ Hello, Crawly,” the Duke of Hell drawls.

“It’s Crowley and you do that on purpose.”

“To what do I owe the displeasure?”

Crowley huffs, leaning back in his office hair. “All right, I’ll cave. What’s with the radio silence? Haven’t had an actual missive beyond, ‘Muck some shit up,’ for years.” 

“Well, you are one of Satan’s favourites. After delivering the Antichrist, he feels you need a break,” Hastur says, loaded with vitriol. It grates him to no end that he’s a Duke of Hell but Crowley still gets praised for his constant low-level dissemination of dissent. It’s not Crowley’s fault Hastur has zero creativity and shares a brain cell with the toad on his head.

“Oh, well that’s good, er, bad of him. Hail Satan and all that. I’m all rested up though, so, uh, if you’ve got anything on…” 

“Nope.”

Crowley growls. “What do you mean, ‘nope’?”

“I know what you’re like,  _ Crawly _ , without having your little meaningless temptations to occupy yourself. Putzing with those co-pewters--”

“Computers.”

“--and removing manhole covers on sidewalks.”

“Which is genius, by the way.”

“So no. I have nothing on for you today.”

“What?” Crowley whines. “Aw c’mon. Just something small? Anything? A weekend trip?”

“No. Hell is refocusing its resources to prepare for the upcoming Armageddon so you’re not needed anymore. Now suffer.” 

The line goes dead and the music buzzes back on. “Bastard,” he mutters, unplugging the computer straight from the outlet in a pique of pettiness.

Warlock bounds home with a stack of finger paint landscapes comparable to the finest abstract expressionists, and Crowley plasters them over the fridge, snarling at the magnets to shape up and do their job. Warlock emerges from his room, hair a mess from changing his clothes, sporting a grey t-shirt with an outline of a unicorn wearing a leather jacket, sunglasses and headphones with a mane in every neon colour of the rainbow. He’s matched it with yellow pants. 

“That’s a choice,” Nanny Ash says. Crowley frowns and goes to look for his sunglasses. 

“Movie night!” Warlock declares.

Crowley spends the next week hovering around Aziraphale’s shop, getting in the way while the angel tries organizing a new shipment. He rearranges the bibles to the fiction section and receives a thorough dressing down with a lot of shouting and foot-stomping and bluster until Crowley apologizes with a kiss. Aziraphale closes the shop.

For a good twenty minutes, Aziraphale crowds him against the stack of Victorian poetry, hands curled in his hair, mouth hot and wet. He’s much more experienced than Crowley expected and is an expert at weak-kneed, heart-thumping nips from his earlobe down to his collarbones. 

“Are you thoroughly distracted now, my dear?” he asks when Crowley slides to the floor, the back of his shirt catching on a first edition of  _ The Bells _ on his way down and his left pant leg rucked up.

“Hnng,” he says.

Aziraphale preens a bit, failing to hide his grin. Then he says, “But perhaps Nanny Ash was right. You need a hobby.”

“Nuh-uh. Nah. What? No. This is good. Really good. Great even. Perfectly occupied.”

Aziraphale tuts and puts his hands on his waist, pushing back the open sides of his greatcoat. “Well yes, but I’m behind on two shipments now, and you’ve gone off and mucked up my system.” 

Crowley exits an hour late after moving all of the bibles back and unpacking one crate of theses on the theological influences of Hans Christian Andersen--“Totally Hell’s doing. I’m just saying”--and stomps through Hyde Park for an hour before meeting Nanny Ash at the gate of Warlock’s school.

For Thursday night dinner, they go out for Neapolitan pizza. It’s not as good as Italy itself, but it’s pretty darn close, and Nanny Ash only tuts once when Warlock smears sauce down his front. 

Warlock comes home with science projects and art drawings and homework packets. Aziraphale sits with him on the weekends and helps him with his letters, and Crowley walks him through maths, modelling with little m&ms the rules of subtraction as he eats them one by one. Nanny Ash takes responsibilities over the craft projects after both Crowley and Aziraphale end up covered in an explosion of glitter during a Christmas tree decoration project that results in tears and confetti while Warlock stands by laughing. 

Christmas hols are spent tucked up on the sofa reading storybooks and hanging up holly. Aziraphale insists on a tree and Warlock wants rollerblades and Crowley just wants to contain them for a moment, freeze it like a picture he can step into at any time he wants. They walk to the bookshop mid-mornings in the fog and drink hot cocoa, and Warlock naps in the back on the worn and well-loved tartan overstuffed chair while Crowley miracles up little sprigs of mistletoe everywhere and Aziraphale feigns surprise. They clear the furniture and put on ‘Begin the Beguine’ on the gramophone, practising their careful and contained swing dancing between the stacks of books and fragile antiques. Hello you, Crowley thinks, adjusting the bridge of his glasses. Let’s keep on forever. 

Warlock is eager to return to school, bundled in his winter jacket and boots in case it snows. At the start of the spring half, Crowley settles a bit and returns to his own habits. He goes back to sleep after walking Warlock to school, burrowing under the covers in the cold, rising only when Aziraphale collects him for lunch. Sometimes, if he’s lucky and bit crafty, he can tempt Azirapahle to crawl under the covers with him and stay until Warlock comes bounding on the bed, home at last. 

And it’s normal. And there’s no sign of any demonic miracles or surprises, bits of magic and evil red eyes like one would expect from the Spawn of Satan. And it sets Crowley’s teeth on edge, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

When Warlock turns six, he campaigns for a dog. He wants a massive dog, a hairy Newfoundland or a Bernese Mountain Dog. “Or a mutt! Any dog really! I’ll take good care of it!”

Crowley stares at his leather sofa, the heather grey carpet they installed and imagines the massive amounts of shedding. “I’m not hoovering that,” he says, shaking his head.

“I can do it! I’ll do everything!” Warlock bounds around him, coming up just past Crowley’s hip, his brown hair drooping over his face.

“The hoover’s as tall as you are,” Nanny Ash says, patting him on the head. Then she looks at Crowley. “Just know that if he gets a dog, it’s your dog. My boys pulled the same thing on me, and guess who ended up doing all the work?”

“Noooo, I’ll be different. I’ll feed it. I’ll walk it every day.”

“Mr Crowley,” Nanny Ash scolds, voice stern when she sees him about to cave.

“What? Um, no. No dog. No.” He shakes his finger, grimacing at the face Warlock pulls.

Warlock melts into a puddle of tears, flopping on the ground. He kicks his feet and bangs his fist. “But Jack has a dog and it’s the coolest ever. It walks him to school.”

“I walk you to school.”

“Ughhhh.”

Warlock takes to peering into pet shop windows with a forlorn expression, nose up against the glass leaving a smear along with the other hundred noses from passing children. It’s unsanitary and it makes Crowley’s skin crawl, but he has to grab him by the shirt collar to pull him away. “No dog,” he repeats.

“But they’re so cute and they need a good home!”

They are cute, and that’s the problem. They’re little fluff balls with eye patches and feet they haven’t grown into yet. They have big brown eyes, the same sort of look that made Crowley kidnap the Antichrist. “Can we go in and look? Just look?” Warlock asks.

“Hrrrgh,” Crowley says, waffling. “No. No. No.” 

A week later when he thinks Warlock has let it go, he wakes up one morning to Warlock jumping on the bed, hiding something behind his back with a gleeful grin plastered on his face. “Oh Heaven, if that’s a dog, you’ll be grounded for a year.”

“It’s not! But it’s about a dog!”

“No!”

Warlock whips out a poster board made in his favourite neon colours. He has several pictures of dogs glued on it, a printout of his face, and a list of Top Ten Dog Responsibilities I Will Do written in a handwriting that looks very much like Aziraphale’s. “I’m not big enough to spell everything yet, but I told him what to write down!”

“Yes, and he and I will be having words.”

Crowley can’t imagine having a dog. He’s seen the hell hounds, caught glimpses of their massive hindquarters and drooling mouths. Demons don’t look them in the eye, at least not ones that survive to talk about it. And the shedding. And the barking. And then dog smell. He has the sensitive nose of a snake, and he already survived dirty diapers. Why would he want endless amounts of dog shit?

Warlock flips his poster over, revealing a sketched out calendar with the days of the week. He still gets his Tuesdays and Thursdays mixed up, so Crowley knows he has a co-conspirator who helped make it. “I’ll feed him in the morning and night, and take him out in the mornings, after school, and evenings. He’ll get brushed twice a week and bathed every other Saturday.” 

“No,” Crowley says, annoyed and grumpy from waking up too early. “If Aziraphale wants a dog at his shop, he can, but not here.” 

Warlock lights up.

That afternoon, Aziraphale protests, hands pleading in supplication. “Oh, I couldn’t possibly… not with the books. A puppy would eat everything.” 

“But I’ll still take care of it! I’ll come walk it! I’ll move in with you!” Warlock begs.

Crowley lowers his glasses, folding his arms.  _ See _ , he says with his eyebrows,  _ look what you did. _

Aziraphale grimaces and shakes his head. He ignores the look Crowley gives him. “No, I have to agree that maybe a dog would not be the best fit at the moment.”

Warlock kicks a stack of books over and huffs, stomping off to the back room.

The tantruming lasts for another week, and it drives Crowley crazy. He refuses to eat, refuses movie night, and develops a stunning skill at passive-aggression. “I’d take better care of the dog than you do me,” he says when Crowley throws a bowl of mac ‘n’ cheese in front of him. “Nanny Ash makes hers from scratch.”

“Oi, and guess what, Nanny Ash doesn’t want a dog to clean up after. No dog.”

Warlock scowls, kicking his feet against the cabinets under the island. Thud. Thud. Thud. “I’d be responsible.” 

“When you’re older,” Crowley says. Then adds, “Maybe.”

Warlock stills at that, pout still in place in a tiny bent moue but interest piqued. “How much older?” he asks.

And Crowley, who is exhausted about saying no and doesn’t want to hear another thing about a dog, says, “You’ll get one when you’re eleven.”  _ It’ll eat us all _ , he doesn’t add.

“Really?” Warlock asks, knocking over his bowl in excitement. Then he frowns. “That’s ages away. I won’t be eleven for…” He counts on his fingers, “five more years!”

Crowley groans, throwing his head skyward. “Don’t say it out loud, for Hell’s sake.” 

“I’m going to name it Fluffy,” he says, cheering. “Or Ducky!”

“Ducky?”

“After my stuffed duck!” 

Crowley imagines a hellhound stomping through the flat with a duck head and large beak, woofing and drooling as it crushes everything in its path. “Maybe think of some names in the next few years. It should be a nice name, like, uh, Sweetheart. Or Tiny. Or something meaningful. You want a good strong name to reflect what you want to see in the world.”

Warlock rolls his eyes. 

“Put your sunscreen on,” Crowley says. 

Warlock pouts. His hair has grown long again, falling in front of his eyes in a dark swatch. “No,” he shouts, jumping out of reach in his swim trunks. 

“Lotion or no swimming.” 

He sticks out his tongue and darts towards the water. 

“For the loathing of Satan and all that’s unholy,” Crowley mutters, springing up from the beach towel. He hates sand, and he hates water. He could bask all day under the sun though. “Warlock, you need your floaties.”

“No!”

“He won’t go far. Let him be,” Aziraphale says. “I’ll be here.”

“He could drown,” Crowley protests.

“‘Protect him at all costs.’ I made that promise once, didn’t I?”

He deflates. “You did.” 

“Then let me.” 

Little by little, Crowley has to let go. Warlock goes from five to six, from six to seven, his little sunflower sprawling upwards. He shoots up, coming mid-way up Crowley’s chest, lanky and gangling. “One would assume he really is yours,” Aziraphale comments, watching him run along the sand, limbs akimbo.

“He is mine,” Crowley says. 

When Warlock turns eight, school becomes a battle. Gone is the eager little kid excited for finger paints and choosing his favourite pair of shoes every morning. Homework causes an outright blowout, ripping pages and screaming. “What’s the point?” Crowley asks, hissing as the whole flat rattles from his bedroom door slamming. 

“He needs good grades. You know that, Mr Crowley,” Nanny Ash says, though she’s sympathetic. She moves around the island, collecting the shredded fragments of his homework and setting them in a pile. “My second was like this. He was too smart for his own good, constantly bored. He could out stubborn us all.” 

“So what happened?”

“Well, he shaped up quick when he realized he didn’t have good enough marks for his GCSEs. That changed things.”

Crowley lets out a frustrated snarl, and it turns into a pained hiss halfway through. They’ll be lucky if Warlock gets to his GCSEs. “Drink now,” he says. “I’ll worry about it tomorrow.”

It all comes to a head when Crowley gets a phone call from the headmaster, asking if he could come right away. There’s been a fight. He leaps out of bed and snaps his fingers, clothes flying onto his body as he darts for the door. He’s halfway down the stairs when he realizes he forgot his glasses summons them just as he steps outside. He makes it to the school in record time. 

“Just back here, Mr Crowley,” the receptionist says, directing him into the back offices where the administrators work. They know him by name, though he has spoken to them maybe all of ten times in the last three years. He’s the overprotective ageing rocker who hovers by the gate for too long and glares at all the parents as they walk past. They all love Warlock, though, which goes a long way to make up for Crowley’s standoffish nature.

When he enters the headmaster’s office, he stops short, surrounded by two other parents, their children--one who is sporting quite the bruised eye--and Warlock with a split lip.

“Oi, hey,” Crowley says, fixing on him in an instant. He rushes to him, kneeling at his feet so he can get a good look. Warlock’s face crumples, eyes welling as he sniffs and fights back tears. “Hey, Beast. What happened?”

“Your son,” one of the parents says, “started a fight with  _ my son _ .” The father is a boorish man, cutting a built silhouette in his business suit and coordinated briefcase. The kid sits beside him, good looking, square jaw, and straight shoulders, marred only by the shiner on his face.

Crowley ignores him, reaching to wipe away tears. Warlock bats at his hand. “'m fine." He straightens up and stares over Crowley’s shoulder at the wall. Crowley purses his lips at this. Where’d his Warlock go? Sweet and shining and brilliant? He wants--and does not want--to chalk it up to him ever inching closer to his eleventh birthday, but this doesn’t feel demonic in any sort of way, just brittle and hurting. He’s closed down, shut himself off, and somehow Crowley had missed it until it had already escalated. 

The headmaster enters the room. “Ah, Mr Crowley,” he says. “Thank you for getting here so quickly.” Mr Ramsey shakes his hand. He has a kind face, slouched shoulders, and an unkempt moustache gone grey. There’s an air of ease about him that Crowley likes and a weariness that suggests this is not his first fight nor the last he’s mediated. “Now that we’re all here, I was hoping we could discuss just what happened in this scuffle.”

He leans back on the edge of his desk and gestures for Crowley to take a seat with the other parents. He will not and instead chooses to stand behind Warlock’s chair. “I’d like to know how my kid ended up with a split lip.”

“A split lip!” the dad in the suit roars. “My son has a black eye! He was only trying to help.”

“Help? How?” Crowley snarls.

“All right, all right. Let me explain,” Mr Ramsey says. He puts a hand up and the two men fall silent. “There was an incident involving Warlock and Miss Felicity breaking our uniform policy.” He gestures at the young girl sitting with her mother, hair as fiery and bright as the contemptuous look on her face. 

“They were just friendship bracelets,” she says with a scowl. She crosses her arms over her chest.

“Be that as it may, we do have a reason for our ‘no jewellery’ policy.”

Confused, Crowley interrupts. “Can I see these bracelets in question?”

Mr Ramsey reaches behind him and pulls out two matching beaded bracelets decorated with little charms. They are made with the same sort of beads one might find in a craft store and say ‘best friends!’ with little emojis in the garish neon colours Warlock prefers. 

“I don’t get it,” Crowley says. 

The other boy mumbles something under his breath, sneering and snotty. He thinks he heard it right but turns to look at him and says, “Excuse me? I didn’t catch that.”

“I said, he looks like a girl.” 

Warlock stiffens in front of him, swiping at the hair in his face grown long again, and Crowley feels his anger spike, hot and boiling, the tang of sulfur in the back of his throat. “ _ That’s _ what this is about?”

Felicity, with her legs crossed and her little chin held high, says, “That one came around at lunch and stole them from us, called us a bunch of girls and pushed War over. So he pushed him back and got punched for it. I don’t see what’s so wrong with being a girl anyway.”

Crowley grimaces and mouths to himself,  _ War? _

“And how did Mr Jude get a black eye?” 

She stares at Mr Ramsey, shoulders pulled back. A fierce little thing. “I hit him.” 

Crowley smirks at that and notices the scrapes on her knuckles. Lord Lucifer and everything unholy, he wants to strangle this other boy, but the promise of no demonic interventions in front of Warlock holds him back. He likes the girl though, tough and bright. Warlock’s never mentioned her before, but he’s grateful she’s around and that they’re close enough friends to go throwing punches for one another.

“I cannot endorse violence in this school,” Mr Ramsey says. “In addition, there will be further punishments for breaking the dress uniform.”

“Now wait a minute,” Crowley says. “What about the bullying?”

Jude’s father harrumphs. “What bullying? My son was trying to enforce school rules.”

Crowley ignores him and addresses the headmaster directly. “If it was such a problem, why weren’t the teachers enforcing this dress code? I don’t see how it’s the responsibility of some snotty-nosed brat to come around and take Warlock’s things and push him around.”

“Maybe if your child didn’t run around like some sort of nancy he wouldn’t attract that kind of attention!” Jude’s father shouts.

“Mr Blanchard, that is enough!” Ramsey says. 

Crowley is livid, teeth bared, snarling and rabid. Fuck no demonic interventions. He’ll do it with his hands. 

Warlock grabs his wrist. “Dad, let it go,” he says.

“Absolutely not. Nobody talks to you like that. Nobody gets to treat you like that.”

“It happens all the time. It’s fine.” 

Crowley deflates. He looks down at Warlock who seems… diminished. Small. He’s grown so tall in the last few years but curled in on himself. “What do you mean it happens all the time?” He’s failed, Crowley thinks. He’s failed him as guardian and a parent. Didn’t protect him. Didn’t tell him enough just how perfect he is. 

Warlock just shrugs.

“Mr Crowley is right,” Ramsey says. “Jude shouldn’t have interfered, and if he had a problem with the dress code, he should have brought it to the attention of a teacher.”

“Why do you insist on treating this like a ‘dress code’ problem. The problem is that kid’s attitude!”

“I’m not a girl,” Warlock says.

“Yeah,” Crowley says.

“And there’s nothing wrong with being a girl,” Felicity adds.

“Yeah!”

Mr Ramsey silences them again. “Jude and I will be having a discussion about his choice of words and treatment of others, however, since all three of you were involved in a physical altercation, there will be detentions all around. Fair?”

All three parents agree, some more reluctant than others. Then Mr Blanchard raises from his seat, claps his son on the back, and bids everyone a good day. He marches out with his briefcase, blustering down the hall. The rest of them follow suit, shuffling out the door. 

Crowley stops Felicity just outside the headmaster’s office, kneeling so he can look at her at eye level. “Hey,” he says, voice soft. “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“For being a good friend to Warlock.”

“It’s War,” she says.

“Yeah, no.” Crowley smiles. “Not to me. But thank you.” Then he stands and looks and Felicity’s mother who had remained quiet for the most part during the meeting. There’s a weariness about her. She’s thin, her hair flat and untidy, donning a uniform and worn work pants. “Anthony,” he says, extending a hand. 

She looks at him, wary, before taking it and shaking. “Jemma,” she says. “Thanks for, um, being so vocal back there.”

“Look, it seems like your Felicity and my Warlock are something of good friends. We do dinner every Thursday night if you’d like to join us. My treat.”

Jemma looks about to decline, but then Felicity interrupts, jumping up and down, tugging on her sleeve. “Oh please! Can we? That’d be so much fun!”

“I--oh all right then,” she says. “Thank you, that’s very kind.” 

Crowley wraps an arm around Warlock’s shoulder, ignoring the way he tries to pull away. “Let’s go home, yeah?” 

Later, after Warlock has changed his clothes--plain jeans and a navy polo Crowley didn’t even know he owned--he shuts himself in his room and misses dinner. Crowley stalks about the flat before marching to his closet and swinging the french doors open. 

He doesn’t like dressing. Most of the time he conjures his clothes up, borrowing pieces from shop windows or things on the telly. He has a flair for fashion but has settled into a rut since commandeering Warlock, switching out his suit jacket for another just like it, not particular about his shirts or the cut of his jeans, always going for the same low cut snakeskin boots. That has to change, he thinks. 

He pulls out the Alexander McQueen jacket he stole a few years back, running his fingers over the fine red stitching and the matching satin interior. Choices, he knows, say a lot about a person. It’s a subtle change, swapping his plain black jacket for the McQueen, but the fine detail catches the eye. It’s good craftsmanship, hand-stitched, feminine, highlighting the swerve of his spine and then cant of his hips when he walks. 

He makes a point to change little things day-to-day. He finds an old earring from his unspeakable punk rock phase and paints his nails a striking matte black. One morning he pulls on knee-high boots with a sharp heel that clicks in staccato when he struts across the floor. He walks Warlock to school, towering over him, and makes a point to make sure Mr Blanchard sees just how sharp his stilettos are when he walks past. He waves Warlock off and turns to return home, passing the man again, lowering his glasses so he can see the yellow of his eyes. 

“Confidence, elegance, and fear,” he tells Warlock, balancing in a crouch in his heels. “Chin up, shoulders back. Let them look you in the eyes, and they won’t know what to do with you.”

Warlock asks one day after school if they stop at the drugstore, and they hop in the Bentley. He rummages through the glove box until he finds a David Bowie tape and puts it in. ‘We Are the Champions’ start playing. 

“Did I ever tell you about Freddie Mercury?” Crowley asks. “I knew him back in the day. He’s a legend, but there were a lot of people who protested him at the time.”

“Why?” Warlock asks.

“They were afraid of who he was, what he represented. He was unapologetic about his sense of fashion, his lifestyle, his illness. People were afraid of him, but they mostly feared his confidence.” 

Warlock takes that in, sitting in silence. He drums his fingers in time to the bass. 

“I taught him how to sing, you know.” 

“You did not.”

“How do you know? Maybe I did?” Maybe he had convinced him to trade his soul for a voice to compete with the angels. It did the world a lot of good in the end, he thinks. He just hopes Freddie thought it was all worth it. 

The tape runs out and he ejects it. “You’d like Bowie too. I’ll have to put on an LP when we get home.”

At the drugstore, Warlock peruses the nail polish, looking at Crowley under his fringe to see if he’s watching. Crowley feigns casual nonchalance, skimming the school handbook on his phone to see if there are any rules about nail polish in the dress code, his own manicured nails swiping over the touch screen. The matte black absorbs all the light around him, drawing the other shoppers’ eyes like a black hole. Alluring, threatening. Crowley grins. The handbook doesn’t say anything beyond keeping hands and nails neat and trim. Fuck it. 

Warlock picks out a blood-red paint, daring and bit dark compared to his usual colour palette. He’s changing, growing up and away from the bright neon Lisa Frank eyesore to something more experimental. Crowley approves. 

He brings him home and puts on Bowie, showing Warlock how to push back his cuticles and shape the nail. Warlock paints his nails with a steady hand, tongue peeking out from the corner of his mouth in concentration. Then he asks if he can do an accent nail to match Crowley. 

Crowley digs out the black nail polish and helps him do his ring fingers on either hand. Then he paints over his own with the red Warlock chose so they match in opposites. 

Aziraphale pops by for dinner, bringing with him fish and chips. He comes around and pecks Warlock on the cheek first, then Crowley. “Back on the earring, I see?”

“Just an experiment. You don’t like it?”

“I didn’t say that,” he says. Then he taps Crowley’s fingernails. “What a lovely colour.”

Warlock smiles around a bite of his fish, a smear of tartar sauce on his face, and Crowley counts it as a win. 

Warlock takes to David Bowie in an instant and spends several evenings on the computer watching YouTube videos. He loves the red hair and the lightning face paint. He becomes obsessed with ‘Space Oddity.’ Crowley takes him to the barber to dye his hair red to match Bowie--“Definitely not to look like Dad,” Warlock insists--and they talk him out of a mullet. Crowley grins at Mr Ramsey when he drops him off at school the next day, all teeth.

Warlock nicks Crowley’s credit card and orders a vintage poster of David Bowie in a pinstripe jumpsuit, enormous shoulder pads with matching green lapels, hip cocked and hands on his waist in red platform shoes. He hangs it above his bed. They watch  _ Labyrinth  _ with Nanny Ash three movie nights in a row. 

He starts to smile again. Crowley breathes. 

Jemma makes good on her promise and comes over with her daughter for Thursday night dinner, Nanny Ash and Aziraphale in attendance. Ash makes fresh paneer and lamb vindaloo and soaks up the sauce with fresh naan. It’s Felicity’s first time eating Indian food, and she smears it all over her face, hungry for more.

She looks between Crowley and Aziraphale, curious at how close they sit, their elbows bumping, their easy camaraderie that speaks of hundreds of meals shared together. “Is that your other dad?” she asks Warlock. 

Aziraphale looks up at that, shocked and a bit stunned. He sputters. “No, my dear,” he says just as Crowley says, “Yes.” They both stop and look at each other.

“Yes,” Crowley repeats. “Of course.” 

Aziraphale melts a bit, letting out a nervous titter, hands fluttering in his lap. Then he leans over and kisses Crowley, drawing him close for a long breath. 

“I mean obviously,” Warlock says. 

Under her breath, Nanny Ash mutters, “Finally,” and then louder, “More wine?”

An emphatic “Yes!” goes around the table. 

Later after dinner, when Jemma, Felicity, and Nanny Ash leave for their homes, Warlock sits on his tablet in bed. He’s too old for bedtime stories, but sometimes Crowley will let him watch a video or two. “It’s bad for his sleep,” Nanny Ash insists, but Warlock is spoiled and Crowley doesn’t deny it.

“Did you know there’s this astronaut who plays the guitar in space?” he asks when Crowley comes to check in on him. “He sang my favourite song!” 

He turns the screen and shows a video of a man with a guitar, floating through the ISS singing 'Space Oddity.' He has a nice voice, mellow. It’s a fitting tribute to Bowie. “It’s so cool!” Warlock says. He watches it twice more before the tablet gets taken away, and he curls up under the covers. 

“He does a lot more than just sing songs in space,” Crowley tells him, tucking in the covers.

“Like what?”

"Well, he studies the stars and planets and all the atoms that make up the materials in our universe. And he used to live on the International Space Station which represents peace between all of the space-faring nations."

"Cool!" Warlock says. "I want to do that someday."

Crowley swallows hard. He can barely breathe around the tight swelling feeling in his chest, threatening to spill over. He tries not to imagine Warlock at twenty or thirty-five. If--when--the apocalypse goes down, there won't be any space stations or astronauts or channels playing David Bowie. There won't be Crowley, and there won't be Warlock as he knows him. 

"You'll have to study really hard on your maths," he tells him. He bites his lip, and then says, "I hung the stars in the sky, you know."

"Yeah sure, Dad."

He leans down and kisses him on the forehead, ignoring Warlock's protest. "Go to sleep, Beast.”


	3. Part III

When Warlock is ten--“And a half!”--he starts mentioning little comments about getting a dog again. “You know, when I turn eleven, I want a beagle,” he says one afternoon. “Or Felicity thinks I should get a golden retriever, but I think they’re boring.”

Crowley stops in his tracks. They walk through St. James Park, a little takeout container of frozen peas and carrots in one hand to throw to the ducks. School is out for the summer, and they decide to stroll through the park on the way to see Aziraphale. “That’s ages away yet,” Crowley says.

“Nah, that’s like in three months.” He keeps walking, tossing little pieces of veg in the pond. He’s grown, just over five feet and tall for his age. His hair has grown out again in its natural colour, dangling in front of his face. In the last year or so he’s developed a smattering of freckles from being in the sun, and he’s lost the last remains of his baby fat. “I’ve been watching these videos on YouTube, and people run agility with their dogs. They do all sorts of cool tricks. That’d be fun.” 

“Right,” Crowley says. Fuck. 

“And I think I want to do laser tag for my party. Would that be cool? Dad?” Warlock stops walking and turns around, looking at him. Frozen. “What’s wrong?”

Crowley wipes his hands on his pants and chips at his nail paint. “Nothing, uh, laser tag. Yep, sounds good.” Then he gets a vision of a hellhound, sharp fangs and red eyes, leaping into the middle of a shooting range with a bunch of kids. “We’ll have to check dates. Probably won’t be able to do it on the day.”

Warlock shrugs and shakes his head, trying to shift the hair out of his eyes. “That’s okay. So long as Felicity can come.”

Crowley walks the remainder of the way in a daze, numb. How did time fly by so fast? Stop time, stop time, stop it right now. He’s on the verge of a panic attack by the time they reach the bookshop, throat tight and closing fast, heart hammering and sweat beading down his back. He barrels into the shop and waves at Warlock. “Go read a book, yeah? Gotta talk to your old man for a sec.”

“Alright, I guess. But I’m telling Aziraphale you called him old.”

Crowley rushes around the corner, hands flailing against the bookshelves until he finds Aziraphale tucked in the back by his Shakespeare folios. “Backroom, now. We need to talk.”

“My dea--” he says before he gets pulled into the storage room. “Whatever is the matter?” he gasps. Then he takes in the state Crowley is in, the wide eyes, full-blown irises and flushed face. 

“I fucked up. The apocalypse is coming, and I fucked up. Royally.”

Aziraphale stills and lowers his voice. “Have you heard anything from your side about… the Antichrist?”

Crowley lets out a hard rush of air through his nose. “I’m on radio silence. I’ve been on radio silence for the last ten or so years. Hastur’s orders. Or Satan’s. Or someone’s. They said they don’t need a liasion on Earth anymore since it’s the end times. But I may have done something.”

“Whatever it is, I’m here,” Aziraphale says.

And Crowley, fuck, Crowley crumples at that. He’s been hoarding and keeping lies and pretend-playing at a family with an angel and the Spawn of Satan, and it’s about to crash down around him. “Remember a long time ago when you first found out about Warlock?”

Aziraphale nods. “Of course, I remember it like yesterday.” He smiles then, soft and private. “I dare say his arrival changed our lives for the better.”

“Yeah well, you may reconsider that thought because I didn’t tell you everything. I didn’t take Warlock from some evil-doing family. I kidnapped him. From a Satanic convent.”

“You didn’t… Oh!” Aziraphale says, hands reaching up to grab the lapels of Crowley’s McQueen jacket. He jerks him close so they’re nose to nose. “Are you telling me you… You…!”

Crowley swallows. “Yeah. I did.” 

Aziraphale opens the storage room door and peers out, looking at Warlock. The kid sits in the overstuffed tartan chair flipping through a very old encyclopedia. He likes reading about the different planets in the solar system and has his nose so close to the book he’s almost cross-eyed.

“I need to get him checked out for glasses.”

“Checked out for--! Are you out of your mind?” Aziraphale shuts the door again. “Listen to yourself!”

Crowley jabs a finger in his chest, hand shaking. “You promised. You shook on it. Protect him at all costs. Do you still mean it?”

The angel lets out a distressed sound, squeezing his eyes shut. “What is your plan here even? Do you have a plan?”

“Yes,” Crowley hisses. “But I won’t know if it’s working until… you know.” He clicks his jaw shut and rubs at his face. “I never told you, but they wanted me to swap out the babies at the nunnery, deliver the Antichrist and take the spare and…” He mimes chucking it over his shoulder. “And I couldn’t do it. And I just thought, I like this place, okay? And you. I like our Thursday dinners and sitting on the couch and you kissing me up against bookshelves and in the middle of St. James Park. I thought if I could raise the Antichrist upright to be good, he wouldn’t want to destroy everything.” 

Aziraphale looks at him for a long moment, eyes wide and shining even in the dim light of the closet. He brings his hands up to cup his face. “Crowley. Oh, Crowley,” he says. “I--I like you too. Love you even. And this place.”

“Yeah?” 

“Yes, of course. Don’t be dim.” He titters, nervous. “What do you plan on doing?”

Crowley fusses at his nails and picks at the paint. He goes to bite his forefinger, but Aziraphale stops him, gathering his hand in his own. They stand there for a moment in silence. “I mean to go on, I guess. He’s got that trip with Felicity and her mom to the south coast in a week, and he wants a laser tag party. I told him he’s getting a dog.” 

“You’re getting him a dog?”

“Well, Hell’s sending up a hound.”

“Lord have mercy.” 

Crowley blinks back tears, his face hot and stinging. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I want to enjoy it while I can. I want  _ him _ to enjoy it,” he says, and because it weighs on him, their lack of a future and all of the things Warlock still wants to do as a boy, he adds, “He wants to be an astronaut someday. I want more than anything for that to happen.”

Aziraphale nods and brings their foreheads together. “Of course. Anything. Start as we mean to go on--or finish what we started, I suppose.” He kisses him, a long slow press that startles a low sound from deep within Crowley. 

“Thank you.” 

The summer zips by at lightning speed. Warlock leaves for a week to road trip with Felicity and her mom, and he comes back sunburnt and bright red. He itches at his face, and Nanny Ash chases him around the flat with calamine while Crowley watches, slumped on the couch. 

Aziraphale closes the shop earlier and earlier until they’re spending all day together, every moment. They take Warlock to the art museum and have a Star Trek marathon. Warlock loves  _ The Next Generation _ but still reserves a special place in his heart for Spock from the original. He hangs a poster of the Vulcan next to David Bowie, his stern face in direct opposition to the cocked hip and flair of the rockstar. They go good together, though, the spacemen. If they lived a different life, Crowley thinks, he’d swoop Warlock up and take him to the stars. He’d show him Alpha Centauri, a system comprised of two large suns in orbit around each other, and a third circling them both. 

That’s you, he’d say to Warlock, and the other is Aziraphale. He’d point to the two stars in the centre drawn to each other. And that’s me going around you both.

They help Warlock plan his birthday party. They reserve a day at the local arcade and send out invitations for the weekend after his birthday. Warlock makes a list of all the things he wants for his birthday, but the list is short. He wants a dog, of course, and the necessary items that go along with it, and he writes a letter to Chris Hadfield, his favourite singing astronaut, in hopes of an autograph. 

“Mr Ramsey says there’s a summer space program for secondary students, and I want to apply. I have to wait until I’m old enough, but I’m already writing down why I should be accepted,” he writes in his email. “I’m really good at maths, and my dad says I need to be well-rounded so I’ve taken up the guitar just like you. I’m learning about being responsible. I help my nanny with the chores, and my dads are going to let me get a dog named Data. Maybe with your endorsement, they’ll let me in the space program early even. Anyway, thanks for reading this. Signed, War.”

He checks his email every day for a response. “He’ll write back,” Aziraphale assures him.

Crowley wakes up on August 20th just as the sun comes up. He rolls over and finds Aziraphale in bed next to him on top of the covers with a book in his lap, his tiny circular reading glasses perched on his nose because he thinks he looks neat. “Good morning. I thought you might need me today.”

He grunts, pulling the covers off. “Yes. Thank you.” His voice comes out rough and gritty. He kisses Aziraphale on the mouth and then staggers to the closet. He puts on his stilettos and his McQueen jacket. He thinks of it as his battle armour these days. It’s his ‘go to war for Warlock’ outfit. 

He slips out the front door and walks down to the bakery that sells Warlock’s favourite scones. He likes the double chocolate ones that Crowley thinks are an abomination. They’re still hot and fresh from the oven, so he gets two of those, a blueberry for Aziraphale, and coffee cake for himself. Back at the flat, he puts Warlock’s on a plate and stabs a candle in it, lighting it with a spark of his finger. He takes it to his room.

The bedroom door is locked. Warlock’s started doing that, growing up, eking out his independence. Crowley respects it most of the time, but today he waves his hand at the lock until it clicks open and he pushes his way in, setting the scone on the nightstand. Warlock sleeps on, undisturbed. He has one arm over his face and half the sheets kicked off. 

Kneeling at the side of the bed, Crowley shakes him awake. “Good morning, Beast.”

“Mmmph, lemme sleep.”

Crowley smiles, halfway between a grimace and joy. He brushes the hair from Warlock’s face, overgrown and unruly. He doesn’t tell him he has to cut it before the school year. “Five more minutes, okay? Then we have things to do.”

“Like what?”

“It’s a surprise.”

They eat their scones in the kitchen in their pyjamas, or at least Warlock does. Aziraphale, as always, meanders the flat in his wool greatcoat and bowtie. They sing happy birthday off-key, and Warlock hides his face, and then there’s copious amounts of espresso and tea and a race to get dressed. 

Warlock chooses a long-sleeved shirt despite it being August. It’s hot pink with the SpaceX logo and reads, “I want to die on Mars, just not on impact.” He matches it with a pair of faded jeans with holes in the knees and his Captain America chucks. 

“You’re an eyesore,” Crowley tells him, knuckling him in the head.

“It’s  _ fashion _ ,” Warlock says. 

Since Warlock’s official party isn’t scheduled until the following weekend, Crowley takes the three of them to lunch at the Ritz. Warlock picks at four different appetizers and argues that he should be allowed unlimited soda since it’s his birthday. The waiter brings him free dessert. Then they all pile into the Bentley and drive to the Royal Observatory. Sensing the special day, even the Bentley celebrates by playing ‘Under Pressure,’ and Crowley sings along to Freddie’s parts while Warlock covers Bowie.

They stand on the Prime Meridian, Warlock skipping over the line, his hair whipping in the wind, and for a brief moment of hope for a tomorrow, Crowley takes out his phone and snaps a photo. 

After, Aziraphale buys them tickets to see a show in the planetarium. An astronomer talks them through the night sky, showing them all the constellations. He points out the Milky Way, a bright stripe of colour, and the audience oohs. He shows them Lyra and Sagittarius, and when he shifts the map and asks who can find the North Star, Warlock’s hand shoots up into the air. 

He’s riveted, mouth agape, eyes wide and never blinking, and Crowley is enraptured too, watching the light and colours dance on Warlock’s face. 

They drive home in silence, the sunset and the streetlamps flickering to life as they pass. Crowley keeps the stereo on low, and Warlock, squashed between them in the front seat, leans against his shoulder fast asleep and drooling. 

They’re both tense, Aziraphale straight-backed, hands laced together in his lap. Crowley’s knuckles turn white against the steering wheel. After a tense moment, Aziraphale breaks the silence. “So, no dog,” he says.

Crowley shakes his head. “No dog.”

“Wrong boy.”

He starts laughing then, biting his fist to keep quiet. His shoulders shake Warlock, but the boy sleeps through it, too tired from his day of celebration. There are tears leaking from the corner of Crowley’s eyes. He shakes his head. “I don’t know what to do.” 

All day he fought his adrenaline, trying to stay stoic and normal so Warlock didn’t expect a thing. All day he waited for the other shoe to drop, the gates of Hell to open up and unleash a hound on them, to send up spouts of boiling sulfur and imps and hellfire, for this little kid who he rolled on the ground with during tummy time to look at him and not recognize him, to see him and find him lacking. 

“I lost the Antichrist,” he whispers, voice choked, high and tight.

Aziraphale reaches over Warlock’s sleeping body and grips Crowley’s hand. “We’ll find him then. It’s the end of the world, and everything is at stake. Protect him at all cost,” he says, nodding at Warlock. “I think this definitely qualifies, doesn’t it?”

The thing is, Crowley gave Nanny Ash the week off under the assumption that she would no longer be employed after Warlock’s eleventh birthday because they would all be dead. He sent her on a trip to Majorca with her youngest son and hoped for the best. 

“So,” he says, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. “What do we do with him then?” He looks at Warlock, asleep still, creases lining his face in the paisley shape of Crowley’s jacket. “If we go to the convent tomorrow, do we take him with?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. We can’t take him on a hunt to find the Antichrist,” Aziraphale says, mouth open in a gasp. He straightens his bowtie. “We just call Nanny Ash--”

“And what, summon her from thin air? All the way from  _ Majorca _ ?” 

They look at each other. 

“He’ll be fine,” Crowley says, voice pitching upward. “We just give him the tablet, and he’ll hang out in the car. And if he’s very good throughout all of it, I’ll get him a dog.”

Warlock stirs, lifting his head. “Imma get a dog?”

He looks at him, bleary-eyed and heavy-lidded. “Yes, but only if you do exactly as we say.”

So this is how Crowley, with a new lease on life, ends up driving the next morning with Aziraphale and Warlock down to Tadfield. Warlock stretches out in the back with a very loose definition of wearing a seatbelt with his tablet and falls asleep with the thing resting on his face. “We’ll just pop into the nunnery and pop right back out,” Aziraphale tells him. “Won’t be a minute.”

“I don’t even know what we’re doing here.”

“Book collecting,” Crowley says. It’s the exact right thing to say as Warlock yawns and rolls his eyes.

“Can I stay in the car?” he asks.

Aziraphale claps his hands. “Excellent idea.”

“Don’t go anywhere or accept candy from strangers.” 

“Ohhh-kaaay.”

It continues on like this, rather too easily, Crowley thinks. Despite getting splattered with paint during the middle of a paintball gunfight (and thank Satan Warlock stayed in the car for that one or they’d never get him back in) and a rather heated moment where he got to rough Aziraphale up against a wall, nobody gets injured. They don’t find the Antichrist, however. 

Back in the car, Warlock complains that his tablet has died, so Crowley tosses his phone at him. He mouths at Aziraphale, “Miracle it,” waving the dead device at him. 

Aziraphale, who has never so much touched a tablet before, blanches. He picks it up, examining it. “What does it do, even? How can I fix it if I don’t understand it?”

“Just fill it with energy. Use your angelic powers.”

Behind them, Warlock blasts Candy Crush, groaning when he fails a level. (Once upon a time, Crowley tells him, “I invented Candy Crush and microtransactions. It was genius.” 

Warlock rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”)

It’s in the middle of arguing over who’s turn it is to perform miracles that a woman hits Crowley’s car on her bicycle in the dark. There’s a thud and the car jerks as a body goes flying over the hood, Crowley swerving the steering wheel while slamming on the brakes. The tires squeal to a stop. 

“Whoa,” Warlock says, startling. He chucks the phone on the seat and peers out the window. “Dad, you killed her.”

“Shh, I did not. If anything, she killed herself hitting my car.” Crowley opens the driver's side. “Wait in the car.”

“But I want to see a dead body.”

“ _ Wait in the car. _ ”

Warlock presses his face against the glass of the window, though it’s dark and he can’t see anything. He tries not to be disappointed when Aziraphale helps bike girl up and she seems to be okay. Then Aziraphale walks her to the car and Crowley opens the door. “Budge up,” he says.

Warlock scoots over, and the girl, Anathema, looks startled when she spots him, not expecting to find a child in the back seat of an antique vehicle with two men patrolling through the woods at night. “Did you die?” he asks her.

“Warlock.” 

“It’s just that you looked kind of dead.”

Aziraphale settles in the front seat and turns around. “Don’t mind him, my dear girl. He’s just in an inquisitive stage of development.”

Crowley grunts. “That’s a very kind way of putting it.” He can’t be too mad though, however, and he catches Warlock’s toothy grin in the rearview mirror. 

Warlock pokes at Anathema, making a face when she pulls her arm away from him and scoots closer to the window. She looks freaked out. Bored, he turns his attention back on more important things. “Can I have my tablet back?”

Crowley and Aziraphale look up from the middle of their argument, something about a ‘bike’ and ‘you overdid it’ and ‘you wouldn’t know subtlety if it bit you in the arse!’ 

“It’s still dead just like it was ten minutes ago,” Crowley says. 

“Aaargh.” 

They drop Anathema off at Jasmine Cottage--“For all things unholy, stay in the car, Warlock!”--and it isn’t until they’ve pulled back up to the flat in Mayfair that Warlock notices the book she left behind. He reads it out, drawing it up to his nose so he can make out the words in the dark--and Crowley makes a mental note to take him to the optometrist--sounding out each word. “The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch.”

Aziraphale spins around so fast his neck creaks. “What?”

Warlock looks up at him and back at the book and proceeds to read it out again, making sure to enunciate every sound. “The Nice And A--”

“Give me that,” Aziraphale says, ripping it from his hands. “Oh, my Heavens.”

“Hey!”

“Crowley, do you know what this is? This is the key to the apocalypse!”

They look at each and then down at the book. In sync, they reach for their doors and tumble out of the Bentley.

“What do you mean, the apocalypse?” Warlock asks, scrambling after them. He makes several attempts to steal the book back in the elevator, but Aziraphale holds it above his head and Crowley stands in the middle playing keep-away. 

Upstairs, Crowley hustles him to bed despite Warlock’s loud protests. “You said apocalypse!” 

“I said it’s way past your bedtime.”

“But--!”

Crowley crosses his arm and blocks his way from exiting his bedroom. “Do you want a dog?”

Warlock pauses, mouth open mid-protest. He closes it again, nodding. 

“Teeth, pyjamas, sleep. No tablet. Straight to bed with you.” And then because he hasn’t forgotten he almost lost him, he grabs into a tight fierce hug, burying his nose in hair. 

“Ow, Dad. What are you doing?” Warlock asks, voice muffled against his chest.

Crowley grunts and tightens his arms. Then he leans down so he can look him in the eye. He takes his glasses off. “I love you, Beast.”

“Yeah, okay,” Warlock says, fussing with his hair. He looks up at Crowley from under his eyelashes, chin tucked. “I, uh, you too.” Then he bats at him when Crowley goes to kiss his temple so he gets a knuckle sandwich instead. 

Aziraphale stays up through the night pouring over the text, exhaling little exclamations while Crowley fuels him with hot chocolate. Otherwise, he paces the flat, drums his fingers on his leg, sighs when Aziraphale tells him the HGTV is too loud and reorganizes his vinyl collection.

And then he thinks. He hasn’t really had time to process everything that’s happened with Warlock. On one hand, shit fuck, he fucked up and went off and grabbed the wrong kid. It’s not his fault babies all look the same. Although, he thinks, knowing what he knows now, he could pick out a baby Warlock in a lineup of fifty with no problem. He had this particular look as an infant, just before he would wail, eyes widening and brows lifting, his nose scrunching up like before a sneeze. He had one little hairy patch on the very top of his head, but the rest of his newborn hair had fallen out, and he always saved this particular smile just for Crowley, the left side of his mouth quirking upwards like he couldn’t believe his luck. 

He was supposed to be the spare, the one Crowley chucked out, dropped in the Thames, left in a dumpster, this bright and shining sunflower careening towards the sun. Crowley’s fingers clench.

But the real Antichrist is still out there. Maybe he ended up with the Dowlings anyway or maybe he ended up with Mrs Young. Whoever he ended up with could be Warlock’s, well,  _ real _ parents. 

Crowley gave him the best life he could, but despite his best efforts, it wasn’t normal by any means. Warlock has one parent without a job who sleeps through the morning and stays up all night, who hates eating just as much as he does, and swerves to miss pedestrians going ninety past Trafalgar Square. His other parent is a hedonistic angel who hides in his bookshop and drinks like a sailor, dressing like a Victorian reenactor, and popping in at weird hours. The only stable figure Warlock has in his life is Nanny Ash. She’s become more family than hired help, and he loves her so much, but even then he’s getting too old for a nanny. Crowley needs her more than Warlock. 

Would he stay? If he had the option to go?

Disrupting his thoughts, the record player cuts out. “ _ Ah ah ah ah, stayin’ alive, stayin’ aliiiiiiive-- _ Crowley, what the Heaven is going on?”

Aziraphale stands, tipping over the barstool and dropping the book on the counter. Crowley puts up a hand.  _ Stay there. _

“Duke Hastur, to what do I owe the displeasure?”

“We took the boy to fields of Megiddo, and there’s no dog; he knows nothing of the great war!”

Well, there’s that question answered. He looks at Aziraphale. He mouths, ‘He’s in Tadfield. The Youngs.’ 

Aziraphale darts back to the counter and taps at the book. He mouths something incomprehensible back. Crowley makes a face at him. 

“Stay right there, Crowley,” Hastur says. “We’re coming for you-- _ I’m a woman’s man, no time to talk… _ ”

“Shit shit shit shit. Go wake up Warlock. We gotta move,” Crowley says. 

Aziraphale shakes Agnes Nutter’s book in his face. “I need a bible.”

“Well, I sure as Heaven don’t have one of those.” 

“Listen, Hastur says the boy isn’t with the Dowlings so he must be with the Youngs. I think I know how to find him, but I need a bible first to interpret this prophecy. We’ll be safe at the bookshop.”

“Right. Wake him up. I need to grab something.” 

Aziraphale goes to the bedroom while Crowley goes to the safe. It swings open and he stares at the thermos with a shaky breath. He hears Warlock answer his door with a sleepy, “Whazzit?” followed by directions from the angel to get dressed and hurry. 

“Grab his tablet and spare socks. He’ll need some snacks too. There’s a lunch bag in the freezer.” 

Aziraphale comes around on his way to the kitchen. “And what are you doing--oh.” He sees the thermos. “I did wonder what happened with that.”

Crowley frowns, face stern and apprehensive. “As I said, it’s insurance. Now’s the time to use it. Hastur’s coming. Probably Ligur too.” 

Aziraphale puts a hand on Crowley’s forearm, nudging him to turn around and look at him. Their eyes meet. “Let me,” he says, taking the thermos. “You have me now.” Crowley stares at him for a moment, and the space behind his eyes grows tight with emotion. He looks down at the floor and swallows. Aziraphale squeezes his shoulders. “Go finish up with Warlock. I’ll do this.”

In fifteen minutes, they’re out the door, Crowley hustling Warlock with an arm around his shoulder while Aziraphale cradles the thermos of holy water. “Dad, what’s happening? You’re freaking me out.” They step out onto the street and pile into the Bentley, shoving Warlock between them in the front seat.

“We’re all right,” Aziraphale says, patting his knee. “Just stay close, and do not go anywhere without our permission.” 

Crowley throws his bag at him with his tablet and some snacks, but Warlock doesn’t open it, just grips it in both hands. They speed off to the bookshop. 

Once inside, Crowley crowds around Warlock, directing him to the tartan chair while Aziraphale dashes to the desk for one of his bibles. He crouches on one knee and looks the boy in the eye. “Don’t freak out. It’s okay,” he says. “Dad’s just in a bit of trouble right now. It’ll be fine.”

Warlock swallows and looks around the shop with frantic eyes. His hair is a mess, his long and freckled face sallow from lack of sleep. Crowley wants nothing more than to bundle him up and hide him. “Are you in trouble with the mafia?”

“What?” Crowley sputters.

“I mean, I’ve always wondered how we can live in the city in such a nice place,” Warlock says. “Every time I ask, you just mutter and walk away. Felicity thinks you’re a trust fund baby.”

“A trust fund--! No. No no no. It’s complicated. I’ve been… laid off by my job which is why I’ve had so much time with you. It was a cushy position, good pay, shit benefits. I may have, uh, fucked something up though, and now I’m in trouble.”

“Like what?”

_ You _ , he doesn’t say.  _ I went off and loved you _ . “It was just a mix-up. Aziraphale and I will figure it out. Yeah?” He brushes the hair from Warlock’s eyes. “We might be here for a few hours so get some sleep.” 

“Can I help?” Warlock asks, alert and earnest. Crowley’s chest tightens and he smiles at him. 

“Just stay close. Do as I say, okay?” 

Warlock nods.

Back at the desk, Aziraphale waves him over and shows him the prophecy and the passage from  _ Revelations _ . “I think this is a phone number. Look up Tadfield’s area code.” 

“I’ll call it,” Crowley says, pulling out his mobile. He dials and puts it on speaker. 

It rings twice before they hear a click on the other end. “Tadfield, oh four six triple six? Arthur Young here.” And then in the background they hear a young voice shouting in delight. “Dad! Look! I got Dog to walk on his hind legs.”

They both look at the prophecy:

> And ye will know hym by this sign, that when ye do call to hym, the Lesser Beaste will walk upon his hinde legs like unto a Dancing Bear.

Crowley hisses and shouts into the phone, “Right number. Sorry!” and punches the red button, hanging up. “Back to Tadfield?”

“Back to Tadfield.”

Once back in the car, Warlock sits in the back and Crowley makes him put on his headphones. The music is so loud they can hear every word of ‘Starman,’ but for once he doesn’t yell at him to turn it down. “So what do we know?” he asks, pulling onto the motorway.

Aziraphale grips the  _ Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch _ in his hands. “Well, the Four Horseman are riding as we speak.”

“Are they yours or ours?” Crowley asks. 

“Oh, they’re private contractors, I think.” Aziraphale checks back on Warlock who has his eyes closed, head bopping to Bowie. “And the Antichrist has a hellhound. What do we have?”

“Holy water? Do you think the Antichrist is immune to holy water? Even Satan will get burned if he touches it, but it won’t kill him outright.” 

They ponder this for a moment. With no other weapon, they need a method of dispersing it once they encounter the boy. “Did you clean out the trunk from our trip to the beach this summer?” Aziraphale asks. 

“Nah, never got around to it. This really isn’t the time to be lecturing me about tidying,” Crowley says.

“No, ah, I think Warlock had a super soaker, didn’t he?” 

“Ohhh, genius! Angel, you’re brilliant!” Then he pauses, huffing out a short harsh breath. “But can we kill a kid? I couldn’t do it the first time, and this is how we ended up in this mess.”

Aziraphale makes a pained face. “It’s the Antichrist, Spawn of Satan. I hardly think he counts as a child.” 

Crowley hisses and slams on his brakes, the cars in front of him coming to a slow down. He curses and slaps his hands on the steering wheel. “Just perfect. A traffic jam. Warlock, reach in the trunk and see if you can find your super soaker.”

Warlock unbuckles and scoots over, folding down the middle compartment so he can shove his lanky arm through the hole. He emerges triumphant with a bright orange and green squirt gun. He turns around to pass it forward and then stops. “Uh, Dad?” he says.

“Not now, Warlock,” Crowley says while Aziraphale readies the thermos.

“Um, it’s just that… I think the road is on fire?” His voice pitches upward. Then he exclaims, “Cool!”

Ahead of them, a wall of fire bursts upward into the sky, blocking out the sun. They’re blasted with a wave of heat. Crowley groans. “Oh, oh no. I--” He hisses. Then he grabs Warlock by his shirt and hauls him up. “Climb over the front seat. Sit with us.  _ Now. _ ” Crowley and Aziraphale make eye contact over his head and at the same time snap their fingers, Aziraphale pulling downward from the sky and Crowley twirling his hands from the floor up into finger guns. The front seat cools in an instant. 

“Hey, I thought you said the Bentley doesn’t have AC,” Warlock says and starts jabbing at the console. Then he whips out his phone and opens Snapchat. 

“What are you doing?”

“Uh, taking pictures of the motorway that is  _ on fire _ ? Duh.”

“Check the book,” Crowley tells Aziraphale once he’s done filling the super soaker. “See if there’s anything in there about how to cross it.”

“What is  _ it _ , exactly?” Aziraphale asks. 

Crowley makes a face followed by a series of unintelligible noises, waving his hands. “Eh, you know. It’s just a ring of fire and definitely not the sigil  _ Odegra _ .” 

“Oh you didn’t,” Aziraphale gasps. 

“I didn’t say I did!”

“All Hail the Great Beast? Devourer of Wo--”

Crowley reaches and slaps a hand over his mouth. “Don’t say it out loud! It’ll make it worse! More powerful! You’re an angel for Hell’s sake.”

Aziraphale bats his hand away. “And I just wonder who set this all up, then.”

“Ha!” Crowley says.

Aziraphale opens the book and starts flicking through the pages, skimming at lightning speed as he mutters, “I really adore Agnes, truly, but why couldn’t she add an index? She wasn’t very organized, I daresay.” 

Then a voice interrupts them from the backseat, low and threatening. “Tsk tsk tsk,” it says. “Crowley mingling with an angel. And who’s  _ this _ ?” 

Warlock turns to look anddiscovers two men with coal-black eyes sitting in the backseat, one with a chameleon on his head and another with a toad. They have a sallow, jaundiced look to them, mould and lichen growing on their faces like they’d been left somewhere damp for too long. “What the fuck?” he shouts.

“Language, Warlock,” Crowley and Aziraphale say in unison.

Then Hastur reaches up and rips of Crowley’s sunglasses, snapping them in half. “You’re in trouble. Look at you, consorting with the enemy, playing the housewife.” 

Crowley snarls and tries to snatch his glasses back. “I’ll have you know, I make a good housewife. No playing.” Both Aziraphale and Warlock wince, which he catches from the corner of his eye. He does a double-take. “What? I can do laundry when I want to. Shut up.”

“Give up, Crowley,” Ligur says. “You can’t escape London. Nothing can.”

Aziraphale looks at him from his peripheral, nodding his head, just a touch. Crowley nods back. “Let’s find out, shall we?” He turns around and puts his indicator on, pulling out onto the shoulder.

“Where are you going?” Hastur asks, voice raising when he looks out the windshield, the Bentley careening towards the wall of fire. “You’ll discorporate us all!” 

Aziraphale grips Warlock’s hand and leans in, whispering in his ear. “Stick with me,” he tells him, blasting them with a sudden burst of cold air. Crowley grins, all teeth, eyes wide, and knuckles gripping the steering wheel with both hands. He downshifts and slams on the gas. 

“Awesome,” Warlock says, phone out. 

They hit the wall of fire, and smoke starts to fill the car. Behind them, both Hastur and Ligur screech. When Warlock turns to look, Aziraphale grabs his head and forces him to look forward. The smell of sulfur fills the cabin as they disintegrate and Crowley lets out a roar, gritting his teeth until they come out the other side, on fire, radio blasting Bowie’s ‘Fame.’ 

“What did you do to my car?” Crowley shouts at Warlock. 

“What did I do?” he shouts back. “It’s on fire!” He pulls out his phone and has Snapchat rolling already when they burst out the other side, waving at two police officers sitting in their panda car. He puts it on loop and sends the video of their faces agape to Felicity with the caption: AWESOME in rainbow font.

“Take a left up here,” Aziraphale says, pointing at a fork in the road.

“No, it’s definitely a right,” Crowley argues, already turning.

Aziraphale huffs and grabs the steering wheel, jerking it in the other direction. “You’re always wrong with your directions. You once thought you were going to India and ended up in the Americas.”

“Well it worked out all right, didn’t?”

With Aziraphale’s guidance, they get to the Tadfield airbase without issue besides sitting in a flaming vehicle held together by the sheer will of an angel and a demon and the excitement of their very human, not Antichristy child. Crowley hustles Warlock out of the burning car, scooping him up and running up to the guard standing at his post. “Move, move, move!” he yells just as the car explodes, bursting into a fiery fountain.

The guard, a young fellow with wide eyes staring at the burning car, blocks them with his assault rifle. Aziraphale huffs and points his super soaker at him. “I know how to use this,” he says. 

“You’re not supposed to be here. You need to leave,” the guard says, and then the tinkling of a bike bell sounds and four kids ride barreling past, the boy in the lead snapping his fingers at the gate, opening it.

“That’s him!” Crowley and Aziraphale shout in unison. 

“I’m terribly sorry about this,” Aziraphale says then. “May you wake up back home in Texas with your mother. Don’t forget it’s her birthday.” He snaps his fingers and the guard disappears.

Warlock, who is too busy snapping Felicity a picture of the burnt carcass of the Bentley, doesn’t notice. Crowley snatches the phone from his hands--“Hey!”--and grabs his wrist. “All right, let’s go.” 

They run into the compound, chasing after the kids on their bikes. It’s slow going by foot, Warlock falling behind with his hair hanging in front of his face. Haircut, Crowley thinks. When all of this is over, they’re going to see the barber and then make a visit to the optometrist. 

They catch up with the Antichrist and his friends just as the Four Horsemen appear, and Crowley grabs Warlock by the shoulders and shoves him behind him. “Can you stop manhandling me?” he complains.

“Shh. Aziraphale, that’s him. Kill him,” Crowley says, pointing a finger at the boy.

Warlock pushes his way forward, slapping at Crowley’s hands. “You’re going to what?” he asks. Aziraphale pumps the super soaker and aims. “No, wait!”

Just as Aziraphale pulls the trigger, Warlock jumps and grabs the front of it, pointing it downward at the ground. He gets a mouthful of water for his efforts. 

“Who are you?” the Antichrist asks, turning to look at them, unfazed and curious.

Warlock jumps to his feet, swiping at his now drenched hair hanging in his face. “Who are you?” he retorts. 

“I’m Adam.”

“I’m War.”

Beside the Antichrist, his friend huffs and crosses her arms. “That’s a weird name.”

“Oi!” Warlock shouts with a scowl and scrambles for the super soaker again. 

“Enough!” a voice bellows. They all turn to look at one of the Horseman decked in a red jumpsuit. Her red hair cascades down her back, and she holds a flaming sword, twirling it for show. “Little boys with their toys,” she says and then sneers. “ _ I _ am War and boys like you were meant to serve me, live in me, and die in me.”

“That’s a bit dramatic,” Warlock says. Beside him, Adam snorts and they look at each other and grin.

The girl, Pepper, rolls her eyes. Her arms are still crossed. “Well, I’m a girl, and I do not endorse everyday sexism!” She stomps on War’s foot, forcing her to drop the sword. Then she scrambles for it and stabs it into the Horseman’s stomach.

“Wicked,” Warlock says. He hoists the super soaker, tucking it against his body with expert precision. They watch as the rest of Adam’s friends defeat the remaining Horsemen.

“Just say what you believe!” Adam shouts, watching as Dog comes around to bite Famine in the foot. His friend, a small mousy looking kid with glasses sliding down his nose, takes the opportunity to stab him in the chest, and Famine dissolves into ash around them.

Warlock turns around and glares at Crowley, swinging the super soaker with him. “He gets a dog,” he says, huffing.

“Oi, watch where you’re pointing that,” Crowley says at the super soaker. “Now is not the time to talk about getting a dog.”

“It’s always the right time to talk about it!”

A crack of lightning interrupts them followed by the sound of the earth shifting. They turn to look where a man has materialized from the smoke of lightning and a short, bug-like creature emerges from the ground. 

“What. The. Fu--”

“Language!” Aziraphale and Crowley shout. 

The two new beings stomp over to Adam in unison. Crowley pastes on a smile and bows. “Lord Beezlebub, what an honour.”

“Crowley, the traitor,” the bug says, sneering. They have a strange echoing voice, the sound of white noise and static following them. Compelling. 

Crowley doesn’t flinch, baring his teeth mid-bow in mockery. “Aw, that’s not a very nice word.”

“All the other wordz I have for you are worse,” they say. Besides Crowley, Warlock bristles and pumps his super soaker. “Where’z the boy?”

The man in the suit points at Adam, straightening his jacket. He approaches him with an unconvincing, menacing sort of smile. “Adam! Adam Young!” he says as though they are old friends. Then he leans over so they’re eye to eye, condescending. “You must restart the war. It’s the Great Plan. God commands it.”

“But why would I want to start a war?” Adam asks. 

Beezlebub approaches. “It iz written,” they say. Their voice projects, taking on an ominous, powerful quality that Crowley can feel deep in his bones. “Adam, when all of thiz iz over, you’ll rule the world.”

Adam, unperturbed, looks between his friends with a frown. “Why would I want that? It’s hard enough as it is, and I’ve got all the world I want right here.”

Beezlebub frowns at that, confused as though they never considered the Antichrist might not want to be the Prince of this World, Father of Lies and Lord of Darkness. 

“It’s your destiny! It’s written in the Great Plan!” Gabriel shouts. His face purples in frustration, halfway to stomping his feet like Warlock does when he doesn’t get his way.

Besides Crowley, Aziraphale makes a little gasp in exclamation. It’s the same sort of sound he exhales when finding a riveting passage in a book or discovering a new place to dine, a little ‘aha!’ “Excuse me,” he says, lifting a finger in the air to interrupt. He moves over and stands behind Adam. “You keep talking about the Great Plan.”

Gabriel rolls his eyes and gives him a pointed look. “Aziraphale, shut up,” he says, tone laden with exasperation.

“But I’m just wondering if it’s the… Ineffable Plan?”

Gabriel stands up from where he crouched over Adam and makes a face. “Surely it’s the same thing?”

Crowley’s mouth opens, and his face contorts in confusion and then dawning realization. “Ohh, oh oh. You don’t know,” he says. 

“What’s ineffable mean?” Warlock asks, following as Crowley joins Aziraphale behind Adam. 

“It means it’s unknowable,” Crowley says, looking at him. Then he turns to Gabriel and Beezlebub. “Everyone knows the Great Plan, but by its very definition, we  _ can’t _ know the ineffable plan.” 

Warlock’s brows furrow as he thinks it over. “So why can’t you just call it the Unknowable Plan?” he asks.

“But it iz written!” Beelzebub shouts. 

Gabriel sputters, balling his hands into fists. “God does not play games with the universe!”

And then Warlock laughs, tilting his head back. “I mean, even I know that’s not true. Where have you been?”

Beezlebub and Gabriel baulk at that, staring at Warlock. Crowley snarls a bit and hovers over him. They take a step back and confer for a moment. 

Then Gabriel turns to look at Adam. “You’re a disobedient little brat, and I hope someone tells your father.”

“Someone will, and he won’t be pleazed,” Beezlebub says. They look at each other and nod, then vanish.

“Cool,” Warlock says under his breath, eyes wide.

“We’re going to have a long talk when we get ho--” Crowley starts, then he doubles over, gripping his stomach. “No, no no no no.” He reaches up for Warlock’s hand. 

“Dad?”

Aziraphale looks around, arms out at his sides for balance as the ground quivers. “What’s happening?” he shouts over the rumble.

“They did it! They told Satan! Get Warlock out of here, now!”

Warlock bends over and wraps his arms around Crowley’s torso, squeezing him tight. “No way! I’m not going anywhere!” 

The earth rattles and they get thrown to the ground. Crowley cups the back of Warlock’s head, pressing him close to his chest. He presses his face into the crown of his hair, inhaling.

“We can’t give up,” Aziraphale says, standing. He grabs the sword and wields it, widening his stance. “Come up with something, or… We’ll lose Warlock forever!”

Crowley looks up at that and then down again at the boy tucked under his body for protection. He meets his eyes. Right. He scrambles to his feet and draws his energy upwards, launching his hands towards the sky with a roar. The ground rumbles and his vision blurs out.

When they come to, they find themselves in a desert, the four of them: Aziraphale, Crowley, Warlock and Adam. “Whoa,” Warlock says, and then reaches up with a tentative hand to brush his fingers against Crowley’s wings.

Crowley looks at him for a long moment, fearful. He’s hidden so much from him, but Warlock looks at him in awe. “Cool,” the boy says. “Can I have wings?” he asks, and then looks over his shoulder on the chance that they had magically appeared. 

Crowley smiles at that and then frowns when he sees Adam standing there, alone between them. He looks scared. “Adam, your father’s coming to destroy you. Destroy us all,” he tells him.

“My dad wouldn’t do that,” Adam says, voice cracking. “He wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

“I mean Satan, the one who created you.” 

Adam frowns and kicks the sand with his shoe. “Am I supposed to fight him? What good would that do?”

Aziraphale takes his hand, giving him a sad smile and a squeeze of encouragement. “I don’t think fighting him will work. You need to think of something else.”

Then Warlock steps up to him and hands him the super soaker. “I don’t know what good this will do,” he says, “but it sounds like this Satan guy is kind of a jerk.” Behind him, Crowley squeezes his eyes shut and rubs the bridge of his nose. “I just mean… Your real dad sounds pretty cool. Like mine.” 

Adam looks at him for a long moment and then nods. “Yeah, he is,” he agrees. “He’s bad at computers but he let me keep Dog, so that was cool.”

Warlock turns and shoots Crowley a look.  _ See _ , it says.  _ His dad let him have a dog!  _ Then he points at Aziraphale and says, “It’s okay. He’s really bad at computers too. And they’re not my, like, real dads, but they are my dad-dads.” 

Adam nods as though he understands. Beside him, Crowley swallows the lump in his throat and then smiles. 

“You have the power to change reality, Adam,” Aziraphale tells him. “When Crowley starts time again, you’ll have to do something, and do it fast.”

“I’ll be right here,” Warlock says and takes his hand.

Crowley lets out a huff then, low against the desert wind. He miracles a pair of sunglasses and puts them on, hiding the sting in his eyes. He looks at Warlock, really looks, for one long moment, savouring it. Then he nods. “Ready?”

The boys nod.

The ground quakes beneath them and reality reemerges, back on the blacktop, the four of them standing together just as they had in the desert, Warlock and Adam hand in hand. Smoke fills the sky, the stench of rotting flesh and sulfur billowing in the air. When the smoke clears, a large fiery figure looms over them, casting a shadow over them. Satan.

“Where is my son?” Satan bellows, slamming a claw on the ground. They all stumble under the force of the blast.

Adam lifts his chin, shoulders back and head held high. “You’re not my dad!” he shouts. “No dad turns up after eleven years to pop around and tell you off.”

“What?” Satan snarls, his voice loud, ricocheting off of the surrounding buildings in a deep reverberating echo.

“If I’m in trouble, then it’s with my  _ real  _ dad and that’s not you.”

Warlock squeezes his hand, gripping tight. “Yes! That’s it!”

Satan growls, hoisting himself upwards and out of his earth. His torso alone towers over skyscrapers. He leans forward to peer down at them, his hot breath blasting them with the stench of blood and sulfur. “What did you say?” he snarls.

“Say it, Adam!” Warlock shouts.

Bolstered, Adam takes a step forward and yells, “You’re. Not. My. Dad! And you never were!”

The world around them blurs for a second, their periphery gone fuzzy. Then Satan lets out a low bellow, a painful cry, before throwing his head back. “No!” he shouts. “No, no, NO!” He slides back into the earth as if being pulled down with force. The ground swallows him up, leaving behind a billow of smoke and his foul stench. And as the fog clears, the shape of a car emerges down the road at the entrance of the airbase.

It’s Adam’s dad. 

Crowley laughs and swoops down to snatch Warlock off his feet. He lifts him into the air and spins around. He’s far too big for it, feet barely off the ground, but he smiles delighted anyway. Then Crowley sets him down and reaches for Aziraphale, pulling him close. Their foreheads touch and they breathe together for one long moment. 

“We did it,” Aziraphale says, breathless. 

“Together,” Crowley says. He wraps a hand around his head and draws him in, kissing him long and sweet, savouring the taste of his mouth and the heat of his breath. 

“Gross,” Warlock and Adam say in unison.


	4. Coda

And after the adverted apocalypse, they go home and Nanny Ash returns from her trip to Majorca a little tanner, beaming as she scoops Warlock up in a hug. There may be a stint of body swapping and a half a day where Warlock’s parents disappear to leave him under the watchful gaze of Nanny Ash, but he doesn’t care and doesn’t notice because his birthday party is just around the corner.

Screw Satan and fiery motorways and near death. They’re going to play laser tag!

Crowley starts the morning with a Leggo My Eggo waffle with some extra chocolate chips and syrup. He sets a wrapped package next to the plate. “Something came in the mail for you yesterday,” he says, keeping his voice casual.

Warlock digs into his breakfast and then grabs the package with smudged hands. Aziraphale comes around the other side with a wet wipe. “You’ll want clean hands for this,” he says.

“Lemme guess. It’s a book.” Aziraphale doesn’t care about anything as much as books, and by the weight and shape of it, he can tell it has a hardcover and spine. He peels back the packaging with care, peeking at the cover. “The Darkest Dark,” he reads out loud, continuing to unwrap it. “By… Chris Hadfield.” 

“Go on,” Aziraphale says.

Warlock looks up at them, questioning. Then rips the rest off in one vigorous yank. It’s a children’s book written by his favourite astronaut about exploring space. He’s had this on his Amazon wishlist for months. He opens the front cover and gasps. “Dear War,” he reads out loud, his voice elevating in pitch and volume as he continues. “Happy birthday! I received your email, and I am so happy to hear that you want to travel to space. Here’s a book to get you started on your journey. Good luck getting into your summer space program. You’ll be great! Best, Chris.” 

He looks up, utter delight on his face. Crowley has his phone out recording the whole thing. He leaps off the barstool, knocking it over, and proceeds to scream while holding the book over his face. “Chris Hadfield wrote to me! He wrote to me! He wished me a happy birthday!” 

Warlock continues to jump up and down in the back seat of the Bentley during the entire trip to the arcade, accidentally jostling the cake Nanny Ash had baked for the party. Felicity and her mum and the Them are already waiting in the lobby when they pull up, buzzing with excitement. He shows everyone his book with the autograph and the handwritten inscription and doesn’t even wilt when he has to explain six times who Chris Hadfield is and why he loves him. 

They play ten rounds of laser tag interspersed with pit stops for pizza, cake, and soda. Adam and Warlock go best two out of three rounds on a pod racing game, winner takes all all the other’s tickets. Adam wins but they split their tickets anyway, spending it on two mini Nerf guns and a bunch of little parachute figures Crowley knows he’ll be finding stashed around the flat for months. 

After Warlock eats his fourth slice of cake, and Jemma, Felicity’s mum, looks as frazzled as Crowley feels, he rounds all the kids up and gets their shoes and jackets and all their accoutrements organized, hustling them out the door. 

“Bye!” Pepper says to Warlock, hugging him. “You’re coming to visit next weekend, right?”

“If Dad says I can!” he replies, waving as they all pile into their separate cars and drive off. 

Then Crowley walks him out to the carpark and stops at the trunk. “There’s one thing left,” he says, “for your birthday.” Warlock looks up, hopeful. “Go on, Beast, open it up.” 

Warlock unlatches the trunk, peering into the back. Then a fluffy shape emerges from the dark, booping at his hands with a wet nose. “Oh my god,” he gasps, scooping up the dog in his arms. It’s a little thing, all white except for a dark brown brindle patch over one eye and on the butt. It wiggles in his arms. 

Aziraphale beams and tugs on his lapels, giving a little wiggle. “It’s a bull terrier,” he tells him. “I picked him out myself. They’re supposed to be quite energetic and adventurous. Reminded me a bit of you.”

Warlock squeezes him tight, bringing him up to his face. “I love him. Thank you thank you thank you!”

Crowley smiles and then schools his face into something more stern. “Now remember, you promised you’d help take care of him.”

“Well, yeah, obviously.”

“You have to feed him--”

“I know!”

“--and walk him--”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“--and brush him--”

“Dad!”

“--and name him.”

“Oh.” Warlocks blinks for a moment.

Aziraphale scratches the puppy’s head. “Were you still thinking ‘Data’? That robot whosit from that show you like? Star Walk?” 

“It’s Star Trek,” Warlock says and then lifts the bull terrier in the air so he can look at his face. The puppy wags his tail, a little whip swishing back and forth at the speed of light. He thinks about the NASA missions sending rovers to Mars. Just this past winter, they’d lost contact with one of them, and Warlock had spent a week with his nose up against the screen watching every YouTube video he could. Then he went back and read everything about the six rovers and their missions, memorizing their names and all their functions.

After a moment of contemplation, he nods. “Spirit,” he says, naming it after one of the rovers. 

Crowley makes a face, raising his eyebrows. “That’s a bit unusual.” 

“You said once, I should name my dog a good strong name to reflect what I want to see in the world.”

“I did, didn’t I.” He smiles. His biggest fear was doing it wrong, this parenting lark, but he looks at Warlock, his stubborn kid with his hair too long and the paint on his nails chipping from smashing arcade buttons all day long, this kid who loves Bowie and wants to be an astronaut, who can sit for hours in the planetarium looking up at the night sky. Warlock,  _ a caller of spirits _ . “Sounds perfect,” he says.

THE END

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. HUGE THANKS TO Savvycalifragilistic FOR THE BETA. This story was a beast that poured from my fingers like a fever dream, and she helped me make it actually make sense and read smoothly.
> 
> 2\. This story was entirely self-indulgent smush because I love Nanny Crowley, and I love Warlock. In the show, young Warlock is so friggin’ adorable, but then something happens as he grows up to make him a brat. Knowing his parents are a bit neglectful and unhappy, I just wanted a story where he has a good life, a story where his nanny and gardener don’t just disappear when they realize he’s not the right kid. So, he might not be the Antichrist, but he is still the right kid to Crowley.
> 
> 3\. The title comes from David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” Chris Hadfield gets mentioned several times in this story. He is a Canadian astronaut who has a large social media presence. He spent a stint on the ISS, and as a farewell, he sang his own version of “Space Oddity” which you can find here. It’s my FAVE.
> 
> 4\. Chris Hadfield has written several books, but the children’s book mentioned at the end is called The Darkest Dark.
> 
> 5\. This is the poster of David Bowie that Warlock hangs in his bedroom. 
> 
> 6\. And this is the poster of Spock.
> 
> 7\. The songs Crowley and Aziraphale dance to include “Begin at the Beguine,” “Let's Dance,” and “One O'Clock Jump.” I thought about having them eventually get to “Sing! Sing Sing!,” but Aziraphale would probably have discorporated. I have fallen over in exhaustion trying to dance to this. 
> 
> 8\. Spirit is a Bull Terrier. Think the Target dog. They have the cutest ears and such funny noses and the wiggliest bodies. They are like my third favorite dogs, and we will be getting one for our third dog. 
> 
> 9\. Warlock’s dog is named after the rover Spirit who NASA lost communication with officially in 2011. This is not the same rover that made the news earlier this year (Feb 2019). That was Opportunity who recently ended its mission. I thought about having Warlock name him Opportunity, but the play on Warlock’s name was too great.
> 
> 10\. According to Wikipedia, Warlock’s name can mean "oathbreaker,” "deceiver," or a male witch, but in Old Norse, it may have meant “caller of spirits.” Since Warlock draws Aziraphale and Crowley to him--arguably spirits--I thought it was fitting to keep the name. Also, Warlock Crowley has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
> 
> 11\. You may notice the likes of Shadwell and Madame Tracy don’t make appearances in this story. Newt doesn’t either, but I imagine he would have been there to stop the computers. That is a different story between him and Anathema, of course, but I haven’t figured out how he meets her without Shadwell. Oh well, authorial handwave. This story was an exercise in ‘what would happen if Aziraphale and Crowley actually communicated and cooperated with each other like adults?’ The answer being that I decided they wouldn’t have needed outside interference if they’d just been honest with each other. I’m looking at you, Aziraphale. 
> 
> 12\. Scenes from the show were adapted from The Quite Nice and Fairly Accurate Good Omens Script Book.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did writing it. <3


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